Work 1 for BEYOND / - Sue Dodd Lick Stix (Hot Bikini Bodies), 2011
The ‘Lick Stix’ series are used in Sue Dodd’s work as (hand held) kinetic sculptures which are often videoed and reappear as projected images in live performances and music videos. The bracketed phrase refers to the headline of the tabloid magazine article from which the images were sourced.
I had the great privilege (and pleasure) to get to know Sue at Techno Park Studios in Melbourne last month, where I was for a solo exhibition and where Sue is current artist-in-residence. Over the course of three weeks, I encountered first Sue's music, then her videos, then sculpture. These Lick Stix, produced for a video never finally made, was what she offered me for BEYOND / - and I thought I'd kick off the show with them. Under the lights at the mac, their holographic bikinis sparkle directly into your eyeballs.
Working across disciplines and using various media including installation, performance, and video, Sue Dodd produces artworks that explore and reflect on the precarious nature of desire and it’s meaning in the context of a media saturated contemporaneous (hyper)reality. As the pseudo band ‘Gossip Pop’, configured in a variety of ways, Dodd appropriates facets of celebrity culture and pop music tropes to produce a hybrid, repetitive and exaggerated media persona that is disturbing in its emptiness. Dodd has exhibited and performed nationally and internationally at a wide range of venues including National Gallery of Victoria, The Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Monash University Museum of Art and Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces, Melbourne; nationally at Canberra Contemporary Art Space, the Adelaide International Festival; internationally in Singapore to perform West Space East for the Asialink project Run Artist Run and Shanghai for Satellite for the Shanghai International Biennale. Sue Dodd lives and works in Melbourne, is a lecturer in visual art at Victoria University and is artist-in-residence at Techno Park Studios.
Sue Dodd is represented by Anna Pappas Gallery, Melbourne
Sue Dodd artist statement | Sue Dodd website
Sue Dodd, Lick Stix - Hot Bikini Bodies, 2011 Cardboard, craft stick, aluminium tape & magazine print, 20cm high & 15cm high