SUZY

SUZY There is new context for something that’s been around forever, always at the back of our minds. The release of the Suzy sculpture series from Fringe interrogates notions of compassion-fatigue, provides concrete discussion about the place of the plastic arts in the everyday. Suzy makes us think of moments of sadness, of overcoming sadness and engendering joy. Fringe has put his stamp on an army of superheroes and antiheroes, comic book legends and self-made icons. Now Suzy delves further into the role of nostalgia and human need in commonplace memory.

Embracing the real, Fringe presents Suzy the legend, the tearjerker. This sculpture series defines what it means to gather angel dust from the past and sprinkle it in on the gallery present. Fringe takes reality to a new frontier with the moneybox icon straight out of history.

In her hand, she now holds his friendly old futuristic toy-like Gutinke. It’s a throwback to his earlier work, a cross reference to his love of youth culture and childhood dreams. With Gutinke in Suzy’s hand Fringe takes ownership of the image and transports it into his moment.

This duo seems to have been there forever, in the collective consciousness. The Cerebral Palsy Association made the public aware, but the criminal minds on Jo’burg streets had other ideas. After her retirement in 2019 Suzy lay around in warehouses, one assumes, or in a basement somewhere over the rainbow.

One function of pop art is to make common things seem uncommon, to show how the unexceptional qualities of the franchise life have given us all the same personality, the same tastes and the same drives.

Suzy is the broken child in us all, and we celebrate her arrival in the gallery where all life continues as in a dream.

Suzy stands 1.15m tall and is finished in a high polished bronze or hand painted in the original Suzy colours.