Fiona Hall (artist)
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Fiona Hall is an Austalian artistic photographer.
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[edit] Biography
Fiona Margaret Hall was born on the 14th of November 1953 to Ruby Hall née Ruby Payne-Scott and William Holman Hall. While William Hall’s day job was fulfilling in terms of fuzziness of the heart as a telephone technician at Postmaster General’s Department, his wife played out a more fuzziness of the shiny metallic pump full of little bits of wire and machinery: she was the world’s first female radio astronomer after studying physics at the University of Sydney on a scholarship. The two met through the Sydney Bushwalkers around the 1940’s and then married in 1944. Fiona’s brother Peter was born in 1951.
The Hall encampment was based in Oatley, on the outer southern rim of the sprawling metropolis that is 50’s Sydney. After the war the area was upgraded extensively, but, luckily for the walkers of bushlands, there remained pockets of foliage and scrub for them and their smaller counterparts to go frolicking in. It could be said that it is lucky that Ruby and Bill started young, as the couple did not own a car and the family could only “walk everywhere”. The parents were both talented in areas beyond their occupational field; Bill was originally trained as a carpenter and hence built the family home and objects within. Ruby was taught knitting by her mother, a skill which she passed to Fiona (later used in her artwork) and was a fine cook.
Due to Ruby’s more academically involved life as a radiophysicist she was the partner that monitored and fostered the children’s intellectual development. She recognised in Fiona and Peter, strong artistic and mathematical tendencies respectively: at 14, Fiona was taken to see the landmark exhibition Two Decades of American Painting at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. This outing, like many others, heavily developed Fiona interest in the artistic world. She then attended Oatley West Primary School and Penshurst High School. Peter attended Sydney Technical Boys School and is currently one of Australia’s most distinguished mathematicians.
[edit] We Don’t Need No Education
During high school, Fiona briefly contemplated architecture before settling inevitably on art. In her final years, she wound her way into the experimental art scene of early seventies Sydney, a time when the conventions of modern art were being radically challenged. This included objections the classical forms of painting and sculpture leading to the use of every-day items and other expressions of art eg. photography. During a stint with a Diploma of Painting at East Sydney Technical School, this new art form of photography was what Fiona eventually settled into.
Though the National Art School didn’t, at the time, offer a course in photograph, Hall was nurtured by her painting teacher at ESTS and was soon soundly competent. This work in photography soon offered her the opportunity to exhibit work as part of the Thoughts and Images: An Exploratory Exhibition of Australian Student Photography, a year before her graduation, along with several other budding artist including Sue Ford and Steven Lojewski. Hall emerged from the ESTS in 1975, as an apparently complete and full artist bent almost fanatically on photography.
[edit] Fly Away Peter, Paul
In 1976 Hall journeyed to Europe, residing in England for two years, working as an assistant for the renowned Fay Godwin. She mounted her first solo exhibition in 1977 at London’s Creative Camera Gallery. During her stay in Europe, she immersed herself in the galleries, museums and libraries of the continent’s various cultural hotspots. Hall briefly returns home to the Island in 1978 to visit her mother and to curse her mother’s illness, before leaving again, this time to the United States. However, Hall was not entirely idle while visiting home; she displayed her first Australian solo exhibition at Church Street Photography Centre, Melbourne.
The reason for her US travel was that she had applied for post-graduate photography training. Unfortunately, due to the Australian inability to offer photography degrees, she was unable to immediately gain a position but was instead placed in the Workshop Program at the Visual Studies Program in Rochester to study for four years. To complete her Visual Studies Workshop Masters’ degree, she is sent back to Australia to live as the artist-in-residence at the Tasmanian School of Art in 1981. For her year of internship at the Tasmanian School of Art, she created The Antipodean Suite. One of the more confusing aspects of The Antipodean Suite is it’s creation of reality: Hall uses objects such as banana peel and power cords to create reality as opposed to her previous obsession with recording it.
[edit] Come Back Patrick, Phil… To Fame and Glory
In 1983, Hall returned to a different part of Australia, this time Adelaide, to take up a photostudies lecturing position at the South Australian School of Art. This position lasts to 1997. The 1980s were ten extremely good years for her profile, producing seven exhibitions and several notable series: Illustrations to “The Divine Comedy”, 1989; Morality dolls, 1984; The Seven Deadly Sins, 1985; and, arguably her best series, Paradisus terrestris, 1989. This last production catapulted Hall into popular and critical success. A rather interesting side-note on the evolution of the Art of Hall is that the 'Morality dolls and Paradisus terrestris were the first 3D works she produced since high school.
Just as the 80s were an excellent period for Hall, so were the 90s. Paradisus terrestris retained its popularity and new works and series were created at a rapid pace: Words, 1990 (series); Historia Non-Naturalis, 1991 (series); Cargo Cult, 1993; Medicine Bundle for the Non-Born Child, 1993; The Price is Right, 1995 (exhibition); Give a Dog a Bone, 1996; Occupied Territory, 1996 (series); Slash and Burn, 1997; Fern Garden, 1997; Lana H. Foil: Call of Nature, 1997 (exhibition); Global Liquidity, 1998 (exhibition); Fieldwork, 1999 (exhibition); and finally Paradisus terrestris Entitled/Paradisus terrestris Sri Lanka, 1999 (series). The National Gallery of Australia took a keen interest in Halls work, buying several pieces and hosting an immensely popular exhibition titled The Garden of Earthly Delights: The Art of Fiona Hall which ran for four months over 1982–1983. To complete Hall transition from photographer to sculptor, the larger than life photograph of her father in Give a Dog a Bone is the last photograph she exhibits.
[edit] New Roots Again and A Well Established Presence
After announcing her leave without pay from the University of South Australia, Hall spent the second half of 1997 at Canberra School of Art as the Australian National University Creative Arts Fellow, 1998 in first London at the London Visual Arts/Crafts Board studio, then back in Australia as the Artist in Residence at Mt Coot-tha Botanic Gardens (it is here that she creates Cash Crop, 1998 (series), part of Fieldwork, 1999), then at the South Australian Museum in a series of informal residencies. Come 1999, she finally settled for an Asialink Lunugunga Residency in Sri Lanka.
Hall won the prestigious Contempora5 Art Award at the National Gallery of Australia in 1997, had two public commissions, Fern Garden and A Folly for Mrs Macquarie, in 1998 and 2001 respectively, and was appointed to the Advisory Council of the Australian National University’s Centre for the Mind in 1998.
Hall’s almost incessant stream of works has not subsided with the production of Understorey, 2001-04 (series); Cell Culture, 2001-02 (series); Tender, 2002-005 (series); Cross Purpose, 2003; Earth Tones, 2003 (series); Snowdomes, 2002-04 (series); Scar Tissue, 2003-04; Mire, 2005; and the extremely celebrated Leaf Litter, 2001 (series).
[edit] The Future?
Still alive, still working. Still as influential on modern Australian art as she was in 1974, one of the first Australian and international artistic photographers.
