8 July - 11 September 2005
Fiona Hall is one of Australia’s leading contemporary artists. She is renowned for
her versatility and innovative approach to her practice which has, over three decades, produced
astonishing works in media from photography, to painting, sculpture and installation.
The Art of Fiona Hall is a fascinating exhibition
showcasing this artist’s extraordinary talent and revealing her passionate curiosity about the
world, through works created from 1988 to the present day. The exhibition has been organised by the
Queensland Art Gallery and opens at the Art Gallery of South Australia in July. It is the first
major survey of Hall’s work to be shown in her home city of Adelaide.
Fiona Hall delights in transforming familiar materials, such as sardine tins, soft drink
cans, soap, glass beads, Tupperware, banknotes or video cassettes into exquisitely crafted works of
art. While many of her works appear whimsical and witty, they also carry complex and poignant
references to natural history, colonisation, consumerism and globalisation.
Two major new works,
Understorey 1999-04 and
Tender 2003-05 are being displayed publicly for the first
time in this exhibition. In
Understorey the artist comments on the environmental and
political effects of colonisation, changing glass beads (the currency of colonisation) into exotic
three-dimensional plant and animal specimens;
Tender features fragile birds nests made from shredded US
dollar bills.
Other works on show include baby clothes knitted from Coca-Cola cans, half-opened sardine
tins sprouting tropical plants and human body parts and Tupperware containers transformed into
strange creatures in a museum display case.
Visitors to The Art of Fiona Hall will delight at the ingenious hand-crafted objects on display and find much to challenge their ideas about art and the world we live in.
Exhibition sponsors
