OCG artist Susanne Wawra shows at Custom House, Westport

Remmidemmi, a solo show by Susanne Wawra at Custom House Studios, Westport, 17 March - 10 April 2022

Remmidemmi is a German colloquialism for exuberance, frolicking, antics - a noisy, busy indulgent shindig. Something is happening; people are moving, creating joyous chaos. They are celebrating, making music and dancing, having the craic.

We experience a communal high in these events through a life-affirming breaking out of the ordinary, the everyday. It has become more apparent that it is not a permanent condition but something ephemeral in our current situation.

German artist Susanne Wawra puts Remmidemmi in the context of these challenging times of cabin fever and lockdown fatigue. The exhibition shows mixed media paintings and works on paper, low relief carvings and small sculptures. The work is partly autobiographical, partly fictitious. Working from her family photo archive and found photographs, Wawra moves her protagonists around, and both creates and fills in the gaps.

The imagery draws on the black and white photographs from before the Fall of the Wall in Germany. A young man is playing the squeezebox at her parent's wedding and won't stop playing, while everyone is hoping for the DJ to come on to do the shimmy. The themes of the works created between 2016 - 2022 are social gatherings, get-togethers, and occasions.

This sense of togetherness, the permission to let our hair down, let off steam and live it up, is contrasted by work made in reaction to the recent loss of connection and community. So personified, Remmi and Demmi are walking away from each other. Yet, contrast is also what it means to be alive.

Susanne Wawra (b.1980) is a German visual artist based in Dublin. Working across different media, she explores the intersection between personal autobiography and broader histories. She employs photography, printed matter and documents from her family possessions and from abandoned private archives bought via the internet to expand on her background of growing up in East Germany before the fall of the Wall.

In 2019, The Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) showed Wawra's work in a group exhibition titled "A Vague Anxiety" curated by Seán Kissane. In 2018, Susanne exhibited "Portals", The LAB, Dublin (IE) and "Living in a Bubble", Luan Gallery, Athlone (IE). In 2020, she showed solo "Fernauslöser (Remote Release)" in her native country Germany, as well as "Sitzfleisch (Seat-Meat)" virtually and physically at Olivier Cornet Gallery, which represents Wawra in Ireland.

The show officially opens at Custom House Studios, Westport on Saturday 19 March, 2pm to 4pm.

It will run until 10 April 2022.

Click here to view/dowload a copy of the exhibition catalogue/pricelist.

For more information, please contact:

Custom House Studios

The Quay, Westport, Co. Mayo.
T: 0982873
Email: Admin@customhousestudios.ie
www.customhousestudios.ie