Sue Goldschmidt was born in Melbourne, Australia in 1966, where she attended Beth Rivkah Ladies College, before immigrating to England and taking two BA degrees at the Universities of Manchester and Westminster, in Language & Literary Studies and Ceramics, respectively. She is currently a PhD researcher at the University of Westminster's Centre for Research and Education in Arts and Media (CREAM). Her interdisciplinary visual arts practice encompasses large-scale ceramic installations which envelop the viewer and prompt embodied responses, investigating the ability of objects and spaces to give rise to emotion.
Ceramist Sue Goldschmidt was born in Melbourne, Australia in 1966 where she later attended Beth Rivkah Ladies College. Immigrating to England she gained two Bachelor of Arts degrees at the Universities of Manchester and Westminster, in Language & Literary Studies and Ceramics, respectively. She subsequently taught ceramics at The Institute, Hampstead Garden Suburb (the heart of the Jewish émigré neighbourhood in the mid 20th Century) from 2006–13. Goldschmidt is currently a PhD researcher at the University of Westminster’s Centre for Research and Education in Arts and Media (CREAM). Her interdisciplinary, practice-based research project, entitled Aramaic Incantation Bowls and Contemporary Ceramic Art Practice, investigates connections between historical ceramic objects, critical theory and contemporary ceramic art practice, through the study of Aramaic incantation bowls from 5th-7th century CE Iraq. In the exhibition of her research practice held with the Hyphen Collective of Artists at the University of Westminster (2019), her work In the House of Ephra and Bahmanduch invited viewers to experience three spaces, each cloistering one of three ceramic installations: Sub Rosa, Lilith by the Red Sea Carpet and Flock. These immersive rooms re-imagined Babylonian domestic interiors in which the bowls were typically unearthed, expressing the psycho-space of the homes in which magic bowl praxis was evident. Goldschmidt's large scale ceramic art installations envelop the viewer and evoke embodied responses. Drawn to the immediacy and tactility of clay, as well as to the hidden narratives associated with its history of usage, she investigates the ability of objects and spaces to embody emotion, alignments and misalignments of contemporary and ancient narratives, and a negotiation between the private/autobiographical and the public/universal.
Goldschmidt is also well-known for her delicate ceramic installations representing female garments, such as tutus, dresses and skirts. What could be misread at frivolous fashion-focused art is actually highly autobiographical, described by the artist as ‘intensely human and intensely private’ (Ben Uri Collection). It may seem contradictory that Goldschmidt addresses her public art work as private, but she insists that she must be truly personal, in order to be truly universal. Goldschmidt’s porcelain dresses should be understood as self-portraits, which simultaneously explore the fragility of the human condition. For example, Goldschmidt mixes incredibly delicate materials, such as feathers and flowers, with ceramic, the former which disintegrate when fired in the kiln, thus providing a ‘material metaphor for absent presence’ (Ben Uri Collection). In 2008 Goldschmidt was selected by curator and artist, Sarah Lightman, to participate in the group show, Schmatte Couture: Art and Performance Inspired by the World of Clothing, presented at the Rivington Gallery, London EC2 in conjunction with Ben Uri. In 2018 Goldschmidt was awarded a public art commission to realise her living plant work Hedgerow at Harrow Square, in north west London. The Ben Uri Collection is currently the only UK public institution holding work by the artist.
Sue Goldschmidt in the Ben Uri collection
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Sue Goldschmidt]
Publications related to [Sue Goldschmidt] in the Ben Uri Library