Susanne Wellm Days Like This

Historical, autobiographical, and tactile dimensions are deeply intertwined in Wellm’s practice, which is characterised by an intuitive and playful approach to her material. Rather than telling fixed stories, Wellm works as a poet, unveiling impressions and allowing them to overflow. Her works present narratives open to multiple interpretations, which invite viewers into images that resist singular readings. An empty chair or a stack of old photo albums can quiver in a field of tension between what may have been and what may yet come, between what is visible and what is no longer.

Working with weaving, Wellm introduces a subtle glitch into the image, disrupting its apparent stability. This recalls the characteristic flickering and instability of Super 8 film, a medium associated with Wellm’s own childhood that has remained with her throughout her practice. Combined with her use of sampling, this technique foregrounds the materiality of the photograph while questioning its authority as a document. Running throughout her practice is a persistent interest in time. The exhibition’s title, Days Like This, reflects this sensibility: a reminder that life is shaped by both memorable, inspiring moments and more difficult, uncertain ones.

Wellm draws connections between the intimate dramas of everyday life and the collective histories of modern Europe, while also introducing glimmers of hope and tenderness: in the loving embrace of a group of young people, or in hands offering a cup of tea. She assembles familiar, often humble fragments of reality into layered, poetic image-spaces where fiction and fact, stillness and movement, the internal and the external converge. The resulting works evoke cinematic moments that suggest narratives without resolving them, remaining deliberately open.

Susanne Wellm (b. 1965) is a Danish visual artist. She has received numerous grants and prizes and is represented in national and international collections including; New Carlsberg Foundation, Denmark; The Danish Arts Foundation, Denmark; Portland Art Museum, Oregon, US; The Museum of Fine Arts, Texas, USA; Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts, Japan; The National Collection of Photography, Denmark; Brandts, Denmark.