Fiona
Hall |
|
Fiona Hall, The Price is Right, (detail) |
Remarkably enough, given Fiona
Hall's reputation in the art scene, The Price is Right
is her first commercial showing. Like many of her
recent exhibitions, the subject was predominantly
domestic. The walls featured tupperware illuminated by
internal globes and photographs of Coke cans embossed
with images of everyday object, such as mop, a hot water
bottle and underwear. One of the tasks recumbent on any visitor to a Fiona Hall exhibition is to decode sentences embedded in the works. The first sentence was all to clearly presented. Near the entrance of the gallery was a stack of white dinner plates, each individually inscribed with the declaration: "I have the misfortune of not being a fool." These plates were created by Adelaide ceramist Robyn Best, in a cream which Fiona Hall consequently signed with this sentence heard on a radio broadcast on Dickens. Its a hardworking proposition: the double negative creates a fold of meaning that frames the multiple deed. Signing hundreds of plates with the same sentence might remind us of that scholastic torture designed to inscribe codes of behaviour into recalcitrant students. Like a military drill in a guerrilla camp, this discipline can turn against the status quo. The intense regimen of labour involved in Hall's oeuvre. such as the infant matinet jacket knitted from coke cans, or the tanning of mango skins from her coat in Biodata, reaches a point beyond conformity. In the shadow of Warhol, today's artist is primarily a networker, leaving the manual labour to a workshop filled with students and devotees. To indulge in this tedium seems perverse and the very repetition slowly unravels its own meaning. |
Fiona Hall, The Price is Right (detail) |
A closer look at the cursive structure of Hall's
handwriting reveals subtle deviations. The "I"s
are crossed not dotted. The final letter in
"fool" trails up the rim in a worm-like
movement. Hall's works provide testimony to the pleasures
of the artist working against the grain of her material.
There is a gentle hint of anxiety on the edges of this
enjoyment. Informed viewers will recognise Morse code in
the sequence of lights that illuminate the tupperware
containers. Their SOS signal works on sensitive minds as
a muffled cry from an endangered species of consumer
culture. The act of carving a coke can into the image of
a mobile phone turns this point to a more ironic end. In
works such as these, Hall manages to exercise an
ecological imagination without ever subscribing to a
political program. In that way, she avoids any romantic
veneration of nature, but grounds her conscience in the
everyday logic of domestic routines. This exhibition was a familiar album of experiences. Hall's private debut work lacked the thematic continuity present in many of pervious public shows. As a compensation, many more customers now have the opportunity to suffer Fiona Hall gladly. Kevin Murray |
