Fiona Hall’s exhibition at Roslyn Oxley9 will feature three major new installations, Tender, Scar Tissue and Understorey, recently exhibited in the major retrospective of Hall’s work (curated by Julie Ewington) at Queensland Art Gallery and the Art Gallery of South Australia.
Exhibition Dates: 27 October – 19 November 2005
Fiona Hall’s exhibition at Roslyn Oxley9 will feature three major new installations, Tender, Scar Tissue and Understorey, recently exhibited in the major retrospective of Hall’s work (curated by Julie Ewington) at Queensland Art Gallery and the Art Gallery of South Australia.
Tender
Tender consists of dozens of simulacra of birds’ nests of all shapes and sizes, improbably fashioned from American one-dollar bills, each bearing the official declaration: “This note is legal tender”. The American dollar is the most desired currency in Third World countries, for those desperate for it, like birds scavenging for material to build their nests, the greenback provides shelter. Here, in its ubiquity and availability, the dollar bill is made to assume the form of each exquisitely differentiated avian habitat, at exactly the moment of modernisation, the advance of capitalism and the spread of deforestation is depriving many birds, animals and indeed people, of their environments.”
(Julie Ewington, Fiona Hall, Piper Press, p. 169)
Scar Tissue
Scar Tissue, made entirely from knitted video tape housed, for the first time, in its new museological vitrine home, “includes children’s toys—a golliwog, a bear, Mickey Mouse—along with body parts. Once again the viewer’s memory and role is emphasised: who has not seen a multitude of such toys in recent television news footage, whether pathetically abandoned in war, placed at motor accident sites, or, more bizarrely, used in ritualised public mourning, such as that for Princess Diana? One is now haunted continuously, on a daily basis.”
(Julie Ewington, Fiona Hall, Piper Press, p. 140)
Understorey
Understorey is an exuberant yet shocking account of the inter-relationships of life and death. The work contrasts two views of the tropical environment: the eighteenth and nineteenth century European notion of the equatorial forest, or ‘jungle’, as a site of luxuriance/fecundity/adventure (and also zealous hunting for plant and animal specimens); and the contemporary reality of on-going civil unrest and the displacement of people from traditional territories due to land clearance, urbanisation and the political after-effects of colonisation/ The work depicts elements of plant and human material, using a variety of media, though predominantly glass beads, the currency of colonisation. It includes a number of three-dimensional objects made entirely from minute glass beads threaded onto wire. A recurring motif is the use of camouflage patterning – a symbol of our time that transforms the patterns of nature into the fabric of conflict and hostility. Understorey brings together fragments of a beautiful, fragile, transient realm, and in the way of science, traps them in the filing system (morgue) of the museum display cabinet.”
(Fiona Hall quoted in Julie Ewington, Fiona Hall, Piper Press, p. 163)
—
Fiona Hall has exhibited widely in and internationally since the early 1970s. A major retrospective of her work, curated by Julie Ewington, was held at Queensland Art Gallery and the Art Gallery of South Australia this year. To accompany the exhibition, a lavish monograph (192 pages) was published by Piper Press. A full cv can be found on the Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery website. Fiona Hall had her first solo exhibition with Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery in 1995.
Fiona Hall Zero or Nothing
Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, 2024
Group Show, What Does the Jukebox Dream Of?
Art Gallery of New South Wales, 2024
Group Show, The First 40 Years
Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, 2024
Group Show, The Winter Bride
Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, 2023
Fiona Hall Exodust - Crying Country
Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart Tasmania, 2022
Fiona Hall Afraid Cascade
Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, 2020
Group Show, Caught Stealing
National Art School, Sydney, 2019
Fiona Hall The Hall of Service
Anzac Memorial, Sydney, 2019
Group Show, State of Play
Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, 2017
Fiona Hall Fiona Hall: Uneasy Seasons
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2017
Fiona Hall Gateless Gate
Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, 2017
Group Show, Creative Accounting
University of Queensland Art Museum, Brisbane, 2016-17
Group Show, Sappers and Shrapnel
Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, 2016-17
Group Show, The Nest
Katonah Museum of Art, New York, 2016
Fiona Hall Wrong Way Time
56th Venice Biennale, 2015
Whisper in My Mask
TarraWarra Biennial, 2014
Fiona Hall Veneer
Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, 2014
Fiona Hall Dark Heart
Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, 2014
Fiona Hall Big Game Hunting
Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, 2013
Fiona Hall Shot Through
Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, 2011
Group Show, Head On Photography Festival
Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, 2011
Group Show, True Story
Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, 2010-11
Group Show, Lucky Town
Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, 2008-09
Group Show, STOLEN RITUAL
Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, 2006-07
Fiona Hall
Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, 2005
Group Show
Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, 2005
Fiona Hall The Art of Fiona Hall
Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, 2005
Fiona Hall Cell Culture & Leaf Litter
Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, 2002
Group Show, Dirty Dozen
Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, 2002
Group Show, The First 20 Years
Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, 2002
Fiona Hall A folly for Mrs Macquarie
Royal Botanical Gardens, Sydney, 2001
Group Show, All Stars
Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, 2000
Fiona Hall Fieldwork
Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, 1999
Group Show, Every other day
Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, 1998
Fiona Hall Global Liquidity (with Nalini Malani)
Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, 1998
Fiona Hall Fern Garden
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 1997
Fiona Hall Slash and Burn
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 1997
Group Show
Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, 1997
Fiona Hall Lana H. Foil: Call of Nature
Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, 1997
Group Show, Give A Dog A Bone
Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, 1996
Fiona Hall The Price is Right
Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, 1995
Fiona Hall WORDS
Online Gallery, 1990