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Susan Jacobs's practice mimics that of a passionate scientist, albeit one with loose hypotheses and a relaxed methodology. In the collaborative work Exhausted nature, 2008, Jacobs and Andrew Hazewinkel attempted to make a camera lens out of ice. That the lens didn't work as planned only encouraged further experimentation. Unlike an artist who might present objects to encase artistic truths, Jacobs is not particularly concerned with conclusions. She sees her work as a series of exercises in problem-solving and resourcefulness that inevitably develop their own sense of logic. This approach has led her to work in a plethora of mediums incorporating architecture, sculpture, installation, works on paper, video and photography. The sum of her work adds up to a common line of inquiry rather than a signature aesthetic.

Within or without gallery walls, Jacobs's formula ignites friction between two components: matter and space. In For every solution there is a problem, 2007, the artist orchestrates both in such a way as to conflate illusion and reality. While working at a Melbourne bookstore Jacobs noticed a glass door that was chocked open by a wooden edge. The wedge lined up perfectly with the base of a tree visible outside, giving her the occasion to see two extremes of the one material as though they were joined. She recreated this visual fancy at Melbourne's Ocular Lab, her audience required to step over the tree as they entered. Jacobs's title suggests that even where we attempt to 'solve' the constrictions of building and inhabiting space there is always a flow-on effect to be considered, for both the natural materials used and the veracity of the site ...

This year's installment of 'NEW' at Melbourne's Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA) sidestepped its temporal focus to privilege space, and with her open approach to art-making, Jacobs was well-equipped to engage. Responding to ACCA's existing architecture, coupled with a large floating cube introduced by Nexus Designs, Jacobs's contribution was to be an exhibition within an exhibition. With an architect's touch already present in both the macro- and microstructures, Jacobs desired to have no touch at all. Studying dyamagnetics (magnetic levitation), Jacobs again turned to the potential of nature, so that underneath a large cube a metal ring hovers, just a few millimetres off its plinth. The potential for our own levitation is exciting, as is the potential for collapse. In this micro-space we are reminded of the sensitivity of the material, its precarious spatial relationship a reflection of scientific order and its fragile ecological systems ...

This article appears in excerpted form. You can read the entire article in Art & Australia's Winter 2010 issue.