Fiona Davies
Fiona Davies Lives in Lawson N.S.W. Australia her web site is www.fionadavies.com.au
Fiona, are you currently represented by a gallery?
No. I’ve tended not to follow this up as my work has been primarily ephemeral and site specific - however my work is increasingly object based so I’ve started to think more about it.
How long have you been making art?
In formal terms since I started art school in 1982
What are the main medium/s you work in…
Both site specific installation and object based work
How do you describe your work, realistic, stylised, abstract, narrative, symbolic, other?
I don’t find these categories usually useful in looking either at my work or someone else’s as I tend to then think I know what the work is. However narrative is an important tool in my work.
Does your work have social, political, cultural and or personal messages?
Yes my work is primarily about either individual or group narratives that are normally excluded from the dominant interpretation of history in my culture or when my culture interacts with another culture. I tend to work in non art spaces.
What are you currently working on?
I am currently working in several areas. A really important one being death. I am working a series of installations and objects relating to my father’s death. These are a series of site specific works located in places which where important to how he defined himself. The first in the series is on the website and is titled Memorial/Double Pump Laplace I, It was installed in an Anglican church in the country town in NSW where both my parents grew up. I am currently working on the third in the series which will be installed in a University college in the UK and I will then return to Sydney to install the second in the series.
As part of this investigation of death I’ve curated one show called Looking at Others Stage 1 of the Death Project at P.A.S., Parrramatta, Sydney. This process enables me to really look at how other artists are addressing some of the issues I’m interested in. I curated my own work into the show – this can be problematic but I think I got away with it this time. The second stage of this project which is looking at death in popular culture is planned for the middle of 2009. More details of these two shows are on my website under upcoming projects.
I also have a major show planned for Maitland Regional Gallery in N.S.W. later 2009 where I’ll be working with the archives, oral histories etc of the former use of the art gallery building as a TAFE and as a TAFE museum. The amount of research required for this project is significant and I have been in the archives of the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, State records, Mitchell Library and TAFE Library for a large part of last year. A large oral history project run in conjunction with the council library will start in a month or so and feed individual’s stories into the work.
Now give us a more descriptive outline on your current works.
A description of the work I’m doing the for the third in the series about my father is - The narratives from that last ten and half months of my father’s life that are addressed in this work are focused on the way information is transferred in an intensive care ward. In this situation I could not remember all that was told to me by the staff and at some times I overlaid accidentally overheard information about other patients onto the information we had been given about Dad. The work will consist of both a sound component and an installation. The former law library area will be broken down into a series of smaller rooms accessed through hospital curtained corridors in a similar manner to an asymmetrical maze. The sound component will be multiples of fragments of those overheard conversations. Some will be broadcast from behind the curtains in the corridors, slightly too soft to be able to discern all the words. Others in the internal rooms will be fragments of formal discussions outlining detailed medical information. The sound elements will disrupt the idea of a hospital curtain offering privacy and will play with the rituals around their closing and opening.
How did you get into art?
I used to be very engaged with art when young then when choosing what further study to do after school I convinced myself that I didn’t what to do anything that mostly girls did so I did an Applied Science degree and only got back into art seriously when I was 29.
Your art education was…?
At school I didn’t do Art in years 9 and 10 and got back into it for 11 and 12. When I was 29 I did an undergraduate degree at UWS (this art school is now basically closed as of last year) and postgraduate at Monash.
Was your education helpful, or a hindrance?
My art education was great. I got back into art through glass and then discovered I was most interested in 3D and went from there. I had a very limited exposure to 3D at school.
What did you do before or during becoming an artist?
I’ve worked in science based jobs to earn money since leaving University. I decided I didn’t want to be an art teacher although it is a great way to stay connected with the art world. Sales of my work have been very small as it’s largely been ephemeral and site specific.
Did the place where you grew up have an influence?
Both the narratives of the place and the narratives of my family in those places have had a major influence on my work.
You know you are successful in Visual Arts when…
You are making art.
How important do you think craftsmanship is to artistic creation?
This is an interesting area to think about. I tend to think it’s more an obsession with neatness rather than good or bad craftwork that interferes with my reading of a work.
Do you get to other artists exhibitions, openings etc?
Yes it’s a great way to make sure you see the work and support other artists.
Some say the lifespan of many “artists” post educationally is about five years, any thoughts on that?
I’ve realised over the years one of the major benefits of the way I work is the rate of rejection is so much lower than for artists who work by the more traditional way of approaching galleries or entering prizes etc. I think I would find the rate of rejection many young artists experience difficult to handle as it appears a lot is delivered thoughtlessly.
Fundamentally I don’t believe in any objective value system to say one artist’s work is always better than another’s so the use of ranking systems like say the Australia Council where the grants applicants are ranked in ‘order” or galleries which rank proposals, This probably says more about the host institution than about the art they are looking at.
I had the experience once of travelling a fair way to show my work to a curator. Unluckily they had just discovered a small part of the funding of their overseas work trip was not going to be forthcoming. They wanted to keep going with the meeting but interspersed it with phone calls frothing about the money. If this had happened to me early on I would have thought it was about me instead I enjoyed it as a performance piece but abandoned any hopes of working with that curator.
What happens to works that “don’t work out”?
Often they are the most interesting in the longer term. I know that sounds really glib but thinking through how it doesn’t work in depth gives you more knowledge about how you think the world works. When you see other art that you think doesn’t work you don’t tend to spend as much time thinking about what to learn from that than with your own work.
What sort of research and or reference material do you do for current works and has that changed over time?
My work as it is often about the constructs of history, relies on the use of archives, oral histories and other historical material. I think it’s an important process as I don’t want to rely on the dominant stories of history or use stereotypes when I’m thinking about what happened.
Over time I’ve realised the importance of getting out of the way in allowing viewer’s to read a work by having what you can, consistent with an historical record.
Do you hope the viewer will “get” what you are trying to communicate or do you feel compelled to spell it out to them?
I like a level of ambiguity when I’m looking at works so I like to do that in my work. As I work so much in non art spaces I’ve focused on really clear and short artist statements. I tend to locate them not next to the work but say in a central traffic path where the viewer can read them if required.
I had the experience recently of being with the installation in the church in Aberdeen NSW on the opening day. Luckily it was the same day as the opening of the Pumpkin Festival in the town ( by accident not my foresight) so people could come to the installation in the church without it being a big deal, just as part of their day’s activities. So a large number came through. I spent most of the day talking with people, swapping stories of being with people in intensive care or in hospital. There are so many car accidents in rural NSW that it was a common experience. These viewers really ‘got’ the work and ‘got’ it in terms of their own experiences. This experience has made me think about how I can do this in future.
Some say a measure of an artwork is the ability for it to hold a persons attention or cause the viewer to come back after an initial glance and become captivated by the work, is that so for your works or an intention of yours?
There’s a study somewhere that says that the average amount of time each work of art is looked at in a gallery is 4 seconds. I’ve always been interested in using spaces that are stopping places in viewer’s traffic paths e.g waiting areas or congregating areas such as just outside toilets in museums where groups of people meet up again. These spaces are really good opportunities as people are looking to engage with something as they have to be there anyway.
I always like to reward people who look closely or are a bit naughty by say lifting something up to reveal something else underneath.
Compiled and edited by Steve Gray Contemporary Artist
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[...] A link to an interview with Australian artist Fiona Davies [...]
Dear Steve,
I’ve read your blog for awhile now and have found many interesting artists this way. For some reason when I tried to fill out a contact form on Fiona’s website, the system couldn’t read my “captcha” information, so it apparently didn’t go through. Could you pass this on when you get the chance?
Keep up the great work!
[Dear Fiona,
Found your work via Steve at Art Re-Source, and saw you'll have work at Parramatta Artist Studios.
Hopefully I'll be able to stop by that or other of your planned projects in NSW, as I've just moved to Parramatta.
If you have a mailing list, could you please add my name/email to it?
Best regards,
Elizabeth
http://www.ebriel.com
thecyanstudio@gmail.com ]