Coastal Comfort is Suzie Edwards’ second solo exhibition in the Huw Davies Gallery. Like the first, Please don’t send me home in 2007, Suzie has drawn on aspects of her life to tell an apparently familiar story. But it is told in a way that represents the complexity of coastal life. Here we see ‘the coast’ through the eyes of an imaginative and enquiring artist. David Chalker, Huw Davies Gallery

Sky Dancers 1-8. © Suzie Edwards.

Red Kite Delight. © Suzie Edwards.

Contemplation 2. © Suzie Edwards.

Artists Statement

For a number of years now I have been visiting the village of Merimbula on the New South Wales South Coast, staying in a small cabin atop a cliff with a beach to my left and the Pacific Ocean to my right.

These monthly visits have sustained me in many ways – not the least of them creatively and physically. I know I am not the only only Canberran to seek refuge and solace on the South Coast. The time spent there is as if I am in a vacuum : I am happy doing nothing aside from reading, listening to music, eating and photographing the endless and ever changing horizon. Time exists in a different continuum and the world seems distant.

Today there are so many options available to photographers that it can at times be quite alarming. Our ever busy world foists upon us myriad ways to make things ‘simpler’ and more ‘efficient’, with the ultimate seductive promise of giving us more leisure time. However, I am finding this new found, so called efficiency intrudes into the ‘everydayness’ of our lives.

Our time to be alone, to contemplate and consider, is snatched away by the new technologies. You see it everywhere – personal space is now determined by earphones and, young and old alike, we carry mobile phones and laptops like security blankets and status symbols, interrupting even our most intimate conversations and tasks to answer to their calls.

This is part of the reason I have chosen the Holga as my companion. This plastic fantastic as it is affectionately known is so beautifully uncomplicated that using it has been like finding a very ‘special place’. Like many people we meet, such simplicity belies a unique personality. Just when I think I know how to ‘shoot’ she will surprise me with something I was not expecting. Like a good friend, the Holga asks little of you; she is very forgiving and at the same time very surprising in what she presents you with. Every journey is different and always I learn something new.

To outsiders, Canberra may seem strange—we arrive here, usually from interstate without our family networks and friends, most of us work in one of the many bureaucracies and we live a very regimented life. Our day begins with how much water we use and how long we shower; our lives are determined by legislation and political correctness and, on top of that, we are seen by our counterparts as being a purely political community with no soul. It is essential that we seek to escape from this—so some of us go back to country and some of us go to the coast. It is here that I slow down, unwind, regather and recharge.

This exhibition is just about that: every month I exit the revolving door of work, politics, media and the wider world and seek the solace and comfort of my regular coastal comfort. I know for many of you, that too is so.