Susan Norrie: "Havoc means broken in

Indonesian."
Photo: Stephen Baccon
Volcanic art set to erupt in Italy
April 26, 2007
Susan Norrie's Venice Biennale exhibit is both beautiful and horrifying, writes Clara
Iaccarino.
THE first thing you notice about Susan Norrie is
her intense, kohl-lined eyes. Sitting in her
painting studio, a room above a hair salon in one
of the back lanes of Kings Cross, the artist
admits she's behind schedule with the final edit
of HAVOC (2007), the video installation she will
take to this year's Venice Biennale.
The project, which focuses on the geologically
and politically volatile region of East Java, has
made her more stressed than any other work.
"Venice is just this juggernaut," she says. "It
should have been a two-year project. To turn it
around and process it and rationalise it - I made
it into an allegory. I felt I had to do that."
Norrie became aware of the situation in Java
when she saw a newspaper photograph of a
mudslide that has inundated villages, leaving
more than 25,000 people homeless. She has
since been to the region three times and says
the flow, from a mud volcano, is unstoppable.
"The place where we used to have a beer after
shooting is gone," she says. "The railway track is
gone. They are sacrificing animals into the
volcano to stop the flow. I am interested in a complex culture trying to deal with [one of the]
worst man-made environmental disasters that ever happened." (The flood of toxic mud and gas
was sparked by gas drilling.)
At 54, Norrie has had more than 30 solo shows all over the world and her work is in the
collections of the Art Gallery of NSW, the Australian National Gallery and the Guggenheim
Museum in New York. She recently participated in the Busan Biennale in South Korea and is one
three official Australian representatives exhibiting work at the Venice Biennale this year.
Her exhibit is taking shape on two computer screens. They show a white cloud billowing from a
still surface, like mist over a waterfall. It is, Norrie agrees, both beautiful and eerie. Eerie
because it is the mouth of the volcano that has erupted, causing the mudslide. But the footage,
filmed by a collaborator, David MacKenzie, shows an act of nature, one that is beautiful because
it is so overpowering.
Norrie is interested in politics, and humanity and its relationship with the environment, in
particular thermodynamics and the "ring of fire", a zone of frequent earthquakes and volcanic
eruptions that encircles the basin of the Pacific Ocean.
She is attracted to video-making as a reaction to what she describes as a modern media
overload. By blurring fact and fiction, essentially remixing the art of documentary, she merges
cinematic effects to distil the content of her images.
As evocative as the images of the volcano is video footage of villagers, up to their armpits in
mud, trying to stop the shifting deluge. The climax of the video is a shot of four Javanese
horsemen riding into the sunset, resembling the horsemen of the Apocalypse. Each wears a
T-shirt with the name of the heavy metal band Slayer emblazoned on it. Norrie admits she
supplied the T-shirts to create a scene she compares to a spaghetti western. "It's really tongue-
in-cheek, more dressed-up intervention," she says.
But it is a fitting conclusion to a project which moves from the romanticism of the billowing
clouds to this surreal imagery. "Havoc means broken in Indonesian," Norrie says. "I didn't
realise that until after the fact. This work is a metaphor for so much that is happening in the
world."
The Venice Biennale Australian exhibition will be launched tonight at the Australian
Centre for Contemporary Art in Melbourne. The 52nd Venice Biennale opens on June
10.
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Copyright 2007. The Sydney Morning Herald.