STORY BY MAHMOOD FAZAL, Photo by CHRIS TURNER

As we peer into Manteau Noir in Daylesford, a bunny dressed in shreds stares back at us, puzzling our imagination, the sculpture looks as though it has been dug-up from a grave. It’s gothic, mysterious and beautiful.

“Hip Hip Decay!” is the anthem of Ballarat artist Suzanne McRae, whose doll-like sculptures discover beauty in the grotesque collage of animals, Victorian fashion and fairy tales.

“We lived in Invermay, before it was fancy. Dad built an A-frame house. And so we had five acres of bush and paddocks and I would just go off by myself and play in the bush,” says Suzanne. “It was a great time.”

When asked about her favourite artists as a child, “I loved the personas more than the actual art, like Mirka Mora and Vali Myers. Myers was fascinating. She was like a gypsy, she had tattoos on her face and massive orange hair. She did these wild drawings that were intricately detailed and insane.”

Suzanne McRae decided to study art and ceramics at the University of Ballarat in the mid 90s. “It just never occurred to me to do anything different really. Nothing really that stuck in my mind, maybe I would have been a vet or pet shop owner. But I don't think I realised at the time that it was art, making stuff is just what I did.”

Suzanne laughs as she recalls her early days in the Goth electro scene, as well as listening to Kate Bush, Dolly Parton and opera music. “Me and my friend were the only two goths in Ballarat, but because I was really shy it was great for my personality and character building - it just helped me push myself to be whatever I wanted to be.”

“I backpacked around Europe for a few months when I was 19, and thought oh my god, check out all these mad people wearing haute couture and ancient royal out ts,” Suzanne’s memories come to life as she describes her early adventures, “I was so inspired by the Victoria and Albert Museum, which had rooms and rooms of 17th century clothing. I remember seeing people in the street like punks and the Goths and just
all these people that weren't the standard, Australian Ballarat. I was like, this is my world.”

Over the next decade Suzanne’s aesthetic mutated into costume and fashion, operating shops for clientele from as far as Japan and Spain. “Being a creator I really had the itch to do something different otherwise I was gonna go mad, so I just used all my textile skills and my ceramic skills and I just started making little characters from home.”

She has returned to her beginnings in sculpture and ceramics, coupled with her textile experience, to create pieces which are finding a place in galleries and the homes of people who are trans xed by their character and charm.

“My inspiration would come from everything from like dug up mummies to ephemera from the Victorian era,” says Suzanne. “I've got this incredible pattern making book, which focuses on Elizabethan clothing that they've dug up out of ancient tombs. And really old photos of silk stockings.”

There is something regal about a mummified fox dressed like a dandy or a bat posed like a ballerina. Suzanne toys with the idea of the uncanny valley, a hypothesized relationship between the degree of an object's resemblance to a human being and the emotional response to such an object—our experience of the familiar made strange.

“It's the appreciation and the love of your own history and memory and trying to keep
a hold of personal memories, but being melancholy that they are fleeting, and that they are decaying all the way. I like the idea of something rotten that was once beautiful.”

Hip Hip Decay hiphipdecay.com suzanne@hiphipdecay.com @hiphipdecay