2018
Museums and Galleries
Sydney College of the Arts Gallery and the Verge Gallery, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia
My solo installation When they were last seen was installed at the SCA gallery at the University of Sydney, in the exhibition Being towards Death curated by Tian Kang and Yunyan Tang as part of the Masters of Curating degree at the University of Sydney. At the Verge Gallery my work Racing Patience ICU was installed as part of the group exhibition ‘In Translation’.
In the catalogue for the exhibition Being towards Death the two curators wrote - ‘The German philosopher Martin Heidegger contributed a distinct perspective - ‘being towards death’ - for considering this question. Every second we are aging, dying and heading towards an inescapable end-result: clinical death. Instead of the moment of physical death, the much more authentic death is a continuous process of life countdowns, so it can also be said that the essence of life is death. In consequence the boundary between life and death is blurred. ‘
The other artists in the group show at the Verge Gallery were Merryn Hull, Nerine Martini, Bernadette Smith and Eila Vinwyn. Details of my work at Verge can be seen in the entry for the Kiosk in Katoomba also in 2018.
Newcastle Art Gallery, Newcastle, Australia.
Three of my works were selected from the collection of the Maitland Regional Gallery for the group show Hunter Red: Corpus at the Newcastle Art Gallery. The three works were: Memorial / Time of Death No. 3, 2008, print on paper, 90 x 110 (h) cm
Memorial/Time of Death, video, 3 minutes 30 seconds, 2008, and
Blood on Silk: Blood Alcohol Content, 2014, print on paper 30 x 20(h) cm
The Newcastle Art Gallery website outlines that for this exhibition ‘Corpus is defined in several ways - it can be a collection of written texts, the entire works of a particular author or a body of writing on a particular subject. It is also an anatomical reference to a main body or mass structure.
and
This exhibition interrogates the body across platforms such as painting, photography, sculpture, works on paper and video work. All are unified by themes of the body represented in different and arresting ways - as controlled, out of control, stolen, the abject or ‘other’.’
Other artists selected in this exhibition include Vernon Ah Kee, Selena Archibald, Donna Biles Fernando, Anne Ferran, Francisco Goya, Bill Henson, Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Dani Marti, NELL, Prince of Wales (Mitbul), Julie Rrap, Judy Watson, Juz Kitson, Selena Archibald, Patricia Piccinini, and Braddon Snape.
MAPBM 3 x 6 at The Kiosk, Katoomba, Australia
Holding Space, a group exhibition was curated by Danica Knezevic as the third of three residencies plus exhibitions as part of the MAPBM Kiosk 3 x 6 project. The curator, Danica Knezevic selected this work Racing Patience ICU, 2017-2018, canvas, paint, printed matter found objects and performance, developed during the residency for this exhibition.
In the catalogue Knezevic wrote that - Holding Space is an exhibition of performative experiences that consider the transference of the self through empathy. The performances and installations developed by the five artists relate to the themes of the body and care-giving, including participation and interaction, self-care, concern for the other and a relational space for accessibility and participation.
‘In Fiona Davies installation and performance, Racing Patience ICU the participant of asked to sit in a carnival tent to play a game of life or death. Just as a carnival fortune teller sits across and tells the sitter their future in the hope for affirmation, Davies challenges her opponents to confront the unknown. ‘
The game of life and death referred to by Knezevic was developed from the older game Racing Patience. In that game the relatively sedate game of Patience is played competitively without any concept of taking turns and can become physical and rough and there is no sense of fair play. It is not a social game. It is extremely competitive as each player tries to get their card onto the stacks in the centre. It requires an ability to focus on many things which are changing all at the same time and not necessarily in a good way.
In Racing Patience ICU there are just two players. One draws a central card that describes the patient stats when entering ICU. Starting at the same time one player represents the ICU team trying to bring the patient back into the normal or survivable ranges for blood pressure, heart rate, blood oxygenation and rate of respiration. The other player, death is attempting to take the patient out of those survivable range. The cards have plus or minus numbers that can be attributed to one of the four sets of data. Both players have to track the four parameters, keep a rough tally in their head of the changes in the patient stats as each card is added to one of the four stacks. The players will rotate through their own cards in groups of three able to play the top card only. The card that may save the situation or cause the death of the patient may be just out of reach and there is no time to consider the ethics of particular interventions that drive swinging changes in the patient’s statistical signs. At the end of a few minutes the game is called and a countback determines who has won.
The other artists selected for this exhibition were Frank Davey, Tom Isaacs, Danica Knezevic, Tess Rapa and Ebony Secombe.
Braemar Gallery, Springwood, Australia
My work Once Upon a Time Long Ago and Far Away There were Twenty Three Units of Blood, was selected for the Colour Run exhibition held at Braemar Gallery in Springwood, Australia by the curator Beata Geyer.
In this exhibition artists were asked to examine the relationship between colour, form and space, with a focus on colour as a construct within a framework of broader historical and philosophical perspectives.
This work is one of the many twenty-three units of blood works I have made over the years. It originates in an experience where I think I was told by the nurse on the early morning shift that my father had received twenty three units of blood in one shift and that volume of blood had then bled out into his stomach cavity.
The other artists selected for this exhibition were Louise Blyton, Anne Graham, Tom Loveday, Margaret Roberts, Sarah Breen Lovett, Naomi Oliver and Beata Geyer.
Community
Narrandera Arts Centre, Narrandera, Australia
Artist/curator Ebony Secombe selected large groups of works for the exhibition Near & Far: Yearning / Community / Connection. My work is titled Once upon a time, far away and long ago there were twenty three units of blood taken from a drawer.’
The work consists of twenty-three squat silver crosses installed across a large number of filing cabinet drawers, locker doors, metal boxes and dismantled shelving. The squat silver crosses mimic the red cross symbol that identifies the emblem associated with the supply of blood within Australia.
The red colouration has been removed to leave only a decolourised metallic shape. Decolourising is a chemical process used to remove unwanted staining material when preparing microscope slides or to remove coloured impurities from a material such as dye waste in water. Decolourising the red cross mark shifts the focus to the more formal aspects of the symbol without the associations of the colour red. However, it is the red colour of blood that signifies its usefulness. The depth and shade of red shows the amount of haemoglobin per litre and/or the percentage of oxygenated haemoglobin in the blood. So, the process of decolourising strips away this signifier of purpose and effectiveness in the material of blood.
Other artists selected included Linda Brescia, Hedar Abbas Abadi and Shivanjani Lal.