Biography:

Susanna (Anna) Candlin

I was a successful classical violinist before becoming disenchanted with performing, and changing direction. I took a Fine Art degree at the University of Hertfordshire, for which I received a First and the University Prize 2022. I was chosen to represent the university at the Milton Keynes Gallery in September 2022 for the Platform Graduate Award Exhibition 2022, and was selected from there to go through to the final of the competition.

My sculpture Nexus was accepted into the RA Summer Exhibition 2022 and in the same year I was awarded a month-long artist’s residency at Courtyard Arts Gallery, Hertford, during which I constructed a huge, interconnected root-system installation out of cardboard-mâché. Group exhibitions in London that year included ‘Border/Line’ at the Truman Gallery and ‘Naturally Non Binary’ at IMT Gallery.

The following year, I had my first solo show, Company of Strangers at Courtyard Arts, Hertford and took up a place at the Slade School of Fine Art where I have just completed my two-year master’s degree. During these two years I have participated in many group shows, including two interim showcases at Slade; The Dazzling Edge of Darkness, a one-day sculpture park at the Mullard Space Science Laboratory in Dorking; Blue Tack on the End of a Spike is no Good in a disused office space in Moorgate; Have you Seen Our Microwave in Farringdon, and Giant’s Soap Dish in Hastings. My film Still Breathing, Still Beating was shortlisted for New Contemporaries in May 2024. I have recently joined a collective, Seed_2065, a group of like-minded artists exploring future visioning. We had a group show in December at The Handbag Factory in London and are now working towards a publication of speculative writing inspired by hopeful future ecologies. More group shows are in the pipeline.

My sculpture practice uses speculative fiction to help us imagine Posthuman futures in which strange hybrid creatures exist. These Conjoined Beings are amalgamations of plant, fungi, animal, e-waste and space debris, all of which swirl around in their bizarre DNA; they have their own system of language, semiotics and art-creation.

My recent degree show project at Slade, The Future Museum of the Past, was a ‘planodiorama’ (a diorama inside which the visitor can wander) of sculptures, with elements also of sound, video, performance and creative writing. This hypothetical Museum is curated by Postanthros (humans of the future), who share the Earth with Conjoined Beings and who live in equity and harmony with them and with each other. It is unclear in the curation of the Museum which exhibits are Postanthro re-constructs, which are preserved from the past, and which are living Conjoined Beings. In this imaginary world, some artworks may actually be from the time ‘AnnaC’ spent making sculpture at the Slade School of Fine Art in the 2020s, before being one of the first humans to carry out Conjoinment Procedures in the mid-21st Century.

The fictional, story-telling aspect of my work gives me a base and a context from which to create my biomorphic and strange sculptures.

I use natural and discarded materials as much as I can, to mitigate my ACF (Artists’ Carbon Footprint). I cook up biomaterials out of seaweed, vegetable glycerine, natural sheep’s wool and food dyes, and dry them out in flat sheets or in moulds in a dehydrator. I then use them to create membranes and flower-heads for the sculptures. Sticks and branches from my garden form the armatures of my work, and cardboard-mâché the nodes and joins holding everything together. E-waste and other discarded materials are incorporated, indicating how the geological record has changed in the Anthropocene, and had an impact on the composition of organic life.  

My work is concerned with ‘interconnected entanglements’ in nature, exploring the idea of symbiosis in forming new interrelationships. Posthumanism, and its call for a different and more respectful relationship with more-than-human species, is a huge influence on my work. The environment – and its present disintegration in the Anthropocene – is my main concern; I believe that visual art has a meaningful role to play in transforming attitudes to ecology. I investigate the idea of hope and its importance at this time of planetary degradation and loss. Envisioning positive futures is an ongoing part of that work. For me, hope includes the elements of energy, action and fight, and counteracts the dystopian narratives which produce paralysis and despair.