Confrontation with uncomfortable topics is a strong characteristic of this residency and exhibition. ‘Offenders’ may offend but more importantly, Fiona hopes it raises questions - are we all offenders given the state of our world today?
Flesh, tongues, waste, nature, violence: Fiona Campbell's huge sculptural tongue in the making, fragile and exposed, activates the whole space in a basement cell at Town Hall Arts, Trowbridge. Revealing the labour and handmade nature of it, the visitor can feel the artist's presence and touch. Tongue is like a big wounded body lying there, a vulnerable softness juxtaposed against the hardness of the cell, repulsive but also seductive. Rickety ladders are propped precariously with weblike entrail forms dangling. A disquieting version of snakes and ladders, her installation suggests endless cycles, our desire to escape, to strive, but burdened by heavy realities of destruction, waste and suffering around us.
Fiona is using the art residency as an opportunity to test ideas, responding to the unique site. Her work intersects sculpture, drawing and installation. Recycled and found materials - scrap steel, copper wires, readymade fabrics, twine and objects she finds around her are being transformed into drawings in space, in a state of becoming. These will make threads of interconnections - rhizomic. Her choice of materials relates to the issue of waste, our relationship with matter, nature, and ourselves.
Through her work Fiona tackles environmental exploitation, fragile boundaries and life’s interconnections from cellular to planetary. Issues such as factory farming, animal welfare, caged beings, human imposition, restriction, injustice, over consumption and greed inform the content.
‘I like interesting spaces for art, outside the normal gallery setting - they’re conducive to experimental work. The cells are intriguing, emotive spaces for site-responsive work. The steel bars are a metaphor for incarceration, injustice, protest. I’ve wanted to make and show work in this space for years! My work has recently become more activist in approach. I tend to use metaphor for message. Affected by personal events, loss, the recent death of my dog, I have become more attuned to the horrors that we are facing - our plastic oceans, increasing rich/poor divide, factory-farming, animal extinctions. The labour-intensive process of my work - weaving, wrapping, sewing - is a form of suturing, a cathartic healing, an attempt to repair in response to world destruction.’
Fiona Campbell has been working in Town Hall Arts’ Cells for her residency during April. The work culminates in an exhibition in May.
Further information about Fiona’s work: fionacampbellart.co.uk
