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Activity 4.5:  The Art of Fiona Hall

 

Activity 3 - Make a series of environmental drawings of the same object. The first drawing of the object should be the most detailed. In each of the following drawings, reduce the amount of detail so that you progress from highly descriptive to a more obscured image.

 

My drawings and prints are of daffodils, from photographs taken in Cataract Gorge, Launceston.   Daffodils are not native to Australia, but sit comfortably alongside the natural and other introduced plants in the Gorge gardens and surrounding bushland.  I was fascinated to see a large expanse of wild daffodils in amongst a field of bracken and other native bush plants.  

 

Fiona Hall uses indigenous plants as a symbol for the fragility of the environment in the face of man's desire for riches.  Their fragility in the face of colonialisation symbolise the fragility of native cultures against the onslaught of European beliefs and lifestyle.  This tranlates in the modern era to a degradation of local diversity when faced with globalisations through mass media, and mass production. 

 

My use of daffodils is deliberate.  I have long been interested in the 'naturalisation' of introduced flora.  Sometimes, the introduced plant takes over, destroying the habitat of indigenous species, but, in many cases, the introduced can be seen, like the daffodils, to have found a niche for itself. 

 

In my general art work I have a continuing series about roadside plants - plants found on the roadside between the road and the fence line.  These include a diversity of native grasses, ferns, flowers, fungi, trees and shrubs,  but also include introduced species - grasses like wheat and oats, feral apple trees, scotch thistles, arum lilies and spring bulbs. 

 

 

 

 

 

Activity 4 - From your drawings create a series of whimsical, metal sculptures. Consider using recycled materials from objects such as aluminium cans, jewellery parts, wire, nuts, nails, screws or bolts. Include at least three different materials to create texture and interest within the piece.

 

 

Activity 1 - Much of Fiona Hall’s work is about the environment. Identify and discuss the ideas and concepts evident in both Hall’s pieces Leaf Litter and Paradisus Terrestris, also drawing any similarities and differences between the two.

 

The finished work Spring Festival will be in my studio space at Deakin Waterfront, from Tuesday, June 9th, 2015. 

Reflection:

There was not enough time to make multiple art works.  If I did, I would continue the flowers - Spring Festival theme, with different spring flowers in different types of wine bottle. 

The idea and title "Spring Festival" comes from the spring festivals and spring garden shows that proliferate in spring - especially Canberra's Floriade.  Visitors flock - and lots of eating and drinking are an important feature.   The wine bottle also refers to another introduced plant - the grapevine. 

Materials

Wine bottle, metal wine bottle screw top, cork, medium and light grade aluminium foil (a pie plate was recycled for the first), florists and artists wire, sate sticks (to reinforce stems).  

 

Activity 1 - Much of Fiona Hall’s work is about the environment. Identify and discuss the ideas and concepts evident in both Hall’s pieces Leaf Litter and Paradisus Terrestris, also drawing any similarities and differences between the two.

 

Paradisus Terrestris This is a series of works made from sardine cans.  The lids of the cans art used to make intricate and accurate cutouts of botanical specimens.  The base of the can, or an insert, features images of human sexual organs. 

 

Paradisus refers to the the plants selected - all have some sort of paradise reference, in their name or their origin.  Hall uses likeness of the human sexual organs as a symbol for man's fall from paradise, and original sin.  It is also a symbol for the loss of innocence and gaining of intelligence, leading man to treat his natural environment as an endlessly self-renewing magic pudding of wealth, without thought for the consequences. 

 

Two later sub-series of native plants of Australia focus on the Mabo land rights issue, and the sacred plants of Sri Lanka.

 

An overall theme is man's disregard for native habitat, and the rights of colonised races.  European colonisation of Australia, Asia, Africa and the Americas has caused a reaction by the post-colonial countries, a resurgence of non-European cultures as of at least equal worth, but, conversely, a move away from diversity to a globalised debased culture - based on, in the main, the American mass media.   One could read the sardine tin as a symbol for this globalisation.  The sardine in this packaged form is available everywhere man goes, on Earth and in space. 

Sardines in space reference:  http://www.asc-csa.gc.ca/eng/astronauts/living-eating.asp

 

Leaf Litter - Like Paradisus Terrestris the subject of this work is plants.  Extremely detailed gouache paintings of Indigenous plants are produced on old bank notes.  The plants are native to the region of the bank notes, and directly comment on the extinction of plant species due to land clearing (often by colonial powers) for agriculture.  This continues today, especially in South America (with the destruction of the Amazon rain forest) and Asia (where rain forest is being cleared for palm oil plantations).  Species living in environments are often very localised and there is no way of knowing how many unique species of flora and fauna are now extinct.  (In a whimsical aside, Fiona Hall thins the gouache to near transparency in some areas, allowing the image from the bank notes to show through.  For an English banknote, with Queen Elizabeth the prominent motif, the plant is the indigenous but mundane cabbage, hardly a food associated with royalty, with Lizzy's head appearing  through the tracery of veins of the cabbage leaf.)

Hall's use of paradise in the title is, according to Betty Churcher, a statement that 'paradise on earth is genetic diversity and that paradise will be lost ... [by] environmental degradation'.  (Hidden Treasures, 2007, Australian Broadcasting Commission.)

The use of bank notes, and the fragility of the notes, shows the fragility of man's belief that economic growth is the only way to survive.  In the natural world a balance is achieved - called ecology - an interdependence of species living in the one area.  If this is changed,  the consequences may be devastating.  Destroy a species and the consequences may be small, and largely unremarked, but there may also be long-term consequences.  Destroy an environment, and the consequences are dire.  When one species becomes over-dominant, there is usually some sort of counter-balance occuring.  A new stability is reached. 

Likewise, economies and capitalism cannot continue to grow unchecked.  Sooner or later some natural or man-made check will occur.  When this happens there could be dire consequences for humanity and the whole world. 

 

Both Leaf Litter and Paradisus Terrestris comment on man's impact on the environment.  Leaf Litter has the direct meaning of how man's use of the environment for gain has environmental consequences.  Parasisus Terrestris has added layers of original sin, paradise lost, and the commodification of all things sacred and profane.

Reference:  The Art of Fiona Hall: Education Kit, 2005, Queensland Art Gallery.

 

Activity 2 - One of Fiona Hall’s works is Tender, which features dozens of fragile birds’ nests made from shredded United States dollar bills, a commentary on the effects of modernisation, global trade and deforestation. Carry out research into art preservation techniques then discuss the methods required to preserve both Tender and Paradisus Terrestris.

 

Because the works are painted in gouache, which is quite brittle, and flakey  and rubs off easily, they are very fragile if bent.  The bank notes are also fragile.  Conservator Andres Wise at NGA notes that the works are checked millimetre by millimeter before and after display, and handled with extreme care.  They are stored in an inert atmosphere, between sheets of acid free tissue.  The multiple works are backed with a flexible medium, and displayed by suspending from the top - allowing the work to flex.  

Reference:  Betty Churcher, Hidden Treasures, 2007, video, ABC Television. 

 

I haven't been able to find anything about the preserving of Fiona Hall's work Tender.   It is held in the Queensland Art Gallery of Modern Art

It comprises 183 nests, each copied from the nest of a particular species of bird (QGMA holds 86 of these).  Banknotes, themselves useless except as the overt symbol of the abstract concept of money, are rendered, by their destruction as currency, into a useful material for artmaking. 

 

While banknotes need to be strong and durable, maintaining the integrity of the woven nests in the gallery is difficult.  I would imagine that the items would be stored in drawers or boxes where the nests would not be crushed.  On display, the nests would need protection from drafts and the questing fingers of gallery visitors. 

 

 

 

 

 

Fiona Hall, Tender, 2003-2005, -5 nests out of 183. 

Image source: https://stilgherrian.com/arts/fiona_hall_force_field/

 

In a 2008 exhibition at Sydney's Museum of Contemporary Art the works were exhibited in museum-style glass cases and labeled with the scientific name for the bird which created each nest, and the serial number of the US bills used.

Reference: https://stilgherrian.com/arts/fiona_hall_force_field/ 

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