Susie Losch: New Old Stock

New Old Stock, was a solo exhibition by Susie Losch, which presented an ambitious and joyful collection of new sculptural forms.

A prolific maker, Losch is driven by the discovery of the unexpected, using plaster casting techniques to reveal hidden negative spaces of everyday objects. The process allowed the artist to sculpt without inhibition and relinquish an element of control – which allowed the underneath, the inside, indentations, and naturally occurring patterns to be captured.

Losch found potential for new forms in everyday and discarded materials: kitchen vessels, baking equipment, Styrofoam packaging and fruit half pecked by her chickens. Her experiments resulted in intricate textures, curves and undulations that Losch felt could not be imitated by hand. Losch’s objects were then accentuated with coloured pigment and stacked, suspended or adorned with attachments, which added an element of assemblage and relegated any former potential to an existence as pure form, with only imagined uses.

Included within Losch’s exhibition was a recent addition to MAMA’s Collection by the celebrated Australian artist, Hany Armanious. The major sculpture, Figure Eight was an ode to making - the efforts of artists, labourers, craftspeople and alchemists were conjured.

This inclusion brought into conversation two quite different artists, at differing life and career stages, one with new work and one with work drawn from the museum collection, but with a shared vision of material possibility.