Suji Park

Suji Park is a writer and contemporary artist best known for her sculptural works, which combine ceramics — both abstract and figurative — with other organic and inorganic materials, such as foam, glass, crystals and recycled timber. The ceramics tend to be small in scale, and colourful with iridescent and matte glazes, although Park’s overall installations of them are frequently large and sprawling.

Park moved to Aotearoa with her mother and siblings when she was 12 years old and grew up in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland while her father remained in Korea for work. Her memories of Korea, and the experience of a life and language split between two homes, have shaped her practice; in her exhibition Noise Collector at the Dowse Art Museum in 2022, her process of “composing, firing, breaking and re-making” was described as symbolic of her “fragmented experiences of displacement and belonging”.

Works such as Garden (2015), created for Sculpture on the Gulf, gave the impression of an archaeological dig, with Park’s works strewn like fragments of memory across the Waiheke Island site. Her commission for the North Terrace at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki featured many ceramic heads, influenced by protective forms Park had seen around small villages in Korea: janseung (Korean totem poles), sotdae (wooden poles or stone pillars with carved birds on their top), doltap (a stone built pagoda) and sinmok (sacred trees). There is an animating spirit within the artworks Park produces: she has described how the figures she makes have generational connections among them, and she has dug up buried vessels from previous works to hang and display in new exhibitions, allowing them a life-cycle of their own.

Park approaches her work organically, not only in their arrangement and forms, but also in her process. Park has said, “I never know what I’m making, […] as I’m building or accumulating a form I never know what it will be. That mode of working is very important to me.” This has long been part of her work — she recalls a high school art teacher telling her she “worked with serendipity.”

Park is also a writer and accomplished piano player, and before she went to art school, her parents hoped she might pursue a career as a pianist. She is currently undertaking an MA in creative writing at Korea National University of Arts (a competitive programme which only accepts three students per year). She graduated with an MFA from Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland in 2013. She has also undertaken high-profile artist residencies at McCahon House in Titirangi (2015) and at the Factory of Contemporary Arts in Palbok, South Korea (2022).

Suji Park — IVAN ANTHONY

Depth Sounding —The Pantograph Punch

Mending the broken fragment — Artzone

Suji Park — Artist Profile

2022-2023 — Meonji Soojibga | Dust Collector, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, Tāmaki Makaurau

2022-2023 — Suji Park: Noise Collector, The Dowse Art Museum, Te Awakairangi ki Tai

2015 — Garden, Sculpture on the Gulf, Waiheke Island

2022 — Artist in residence, Factory of Contemporary Arts, Palbok

2015 — Artist in residence, McCahon House, Tāmaki Makaurau