18 July–20 September 2014
Monash University Museum of Art (MUMA)
Ground Floor, Building F
900 Dandenong Road
Caulfield East, Melbourne
Australia
T +61 3 9905 4217
[email protected]
Quoting existing architectural languages in her installations and sculptures, Fiona Connor considers how context and display can condition our perception of an object or artwork. Her work also serves as an archaeology or social history of sites and environments. Recent projects have documented vernacular structures from outside the gallery, while others have explored the architecture and display mechanisms of the gallery/museum itself.
For Wallworks, Connor turns her attention to the everyday settings of Monash University to provide an intimate look at the life of an artwork after it has entered an institutional collection. Having spent time exploring the Monash University Collection as it is installed across the University’s campuses, Connor upends the conventions of museum display by recreating the location and installation of a number of artworks that hang in staff offices, hallways, libraries and other public spaces; bringing the various architectures of the university into the museum along with the artworks themselves. Connor has reproduced her chosen sites in precise detail in order to capture their specificity, personality and lived history. In replicating the walls on which each artwork is hung, the framing devices—such as the texture, colour and architectural trimmings of the walls—are turned into an artwork in their own right, revealing the ways that art interacts with its environment.
The exhibition includes artwork by Marianne Baillieu, Buyuwuy, Noel Counihan, Geoff Lowe, Bertram Mackennal, Michael Nicholls, John Olsen and Trevor Vickers.
Following studies at Elam School of Fine Arts, Auckland, Fiona Connor completed a Master of Fine Arts at California Institute for the Arts, Los Angeles, between 2009 and 2011. Recent exhibitions include 13th Istanbul Biennial: Mom, am I Barbarian? (2013); SCAPE 7, Public Art Christchurch Biennial (2013); Bare Use at 1301PE, Los Angeles (2013); Made in L.A. 2012 at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Murals and Print at Various Small Fires, Los Angeles (2012); and Untitled (Mural Design) at Dunedin Public Art Gallery (2012). In 2010 Connor was a finalist for New Zealand’s most prestigious contemporary art award, the Walters Prize, and was featured in NEW10 at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA), Melbourne.
Symposium
“Rooms for Thought: Radical Uses of Museum Collections”
12 –13 September
See MUMA’s website for details.
To coincide with Wallworks, MUMA, in association with the Curatorial Practice Program at MADA, will present a symposium featuring invited academics, artists and curators to discuss ways in which museum collections can be radically used in the 21st century.
Keynote speakers: Jaroslaw Suchan, Director, Museum Sztuki, Poland; and Dr. Clémentine Deliss, Director, Weltkulturen Museum, Germany.
Followed by a keynote lecture by Charles Esche, Director, Van Abbemuseum, Netherlands, in October.
