Susan Cohn

Susan Cohn’s two works LOVE NO WAR and HubHead intersect in their respective examinations of the potential of jewellery to unite individuals in collective cultural and political enterprises, and the increasingly complex technological evolution of wearable objects and the aesthetics of their interaction with the body.

As Cohn has stated, HubHead ‘is a suggestion for an extreme wearable for the future. In the tradition of cyberpunk science fiction, this jewellery work plays with the decorative qualities of technological devices’ (Artist’s notes, July 2003). Cohn’s work has always been about propositions that test the formal and conceptual conventions of jewellery, and her researches take her from the street to cyberpunk – the science fiction world of high-technology, counter-cultures and virtual reality. Cohn’s headgear is literally the hub around which circulates information for survival.

Jason Smith
Curator, Contemporary Art, National Gallery of Victoria
Excerpt from exhibition catalogue

Susan Cohn
Australia 1950
HubHead, 2002–03
anodised aluminium, 750 gold, 375 gold, monel, acrylic, thermoplastic, steel wire, lacquered copper wire, rubber; headpiece (with attachments)
26.5 x 17.5 x 18.5 cm (diam.); ring: 9.0 x 2.0 cm; digital Lambda print: 150.0 x 70.0 cm
photographer: Greg Harris
Courtesy of the artist and Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne