2014
Museums and Galleries
Campbelltown Arts Centre, Campbelltown, Sydney, Australia
For this solo survey show six of the major works from the first phase of the Blood on Silk project were shown at the Campbelltown Arts Centre under the title Blood on Silk. Two were conflated to present as one work.
The works were
Blood on Silk: Turn to/turn away
Blood on Silk: As per Instructions 1,2 3 and 4 2013-2014, canvas, paint and nails,
Blood on Silk: Site of Production 2014 Video 2.20 mins. As installed at Campbelltown Arts Centre projected onto a black wall
Blood on Silk: Field of Flowers, 2013, canvas, paint, fabrics and found objects, each plinth 60 x 80 x70 cm(h) and painted wall section size variable.
Blood on Silk: Campbelltown conflated with Blood on Silk: Trade 2011, 2012 and 2013, 2011-2014, silk paper and video, dimensions variable
‘Blood on Silk is a dynamic and thought provoking exhibition by Australian artist Fiona Davies. Drawing on research conducted by scientists who planned to create silk microchips used to measure blood cells still within the body, Davies responds with her own personal quest to understand the material, cultural, and personal processes related to surveillance, science, human rights, and death.’ extract from Invitation to the opening of this exhibition
The Whitebox, Griffith University Gallery, Gold Coast Campus, Queensland, Australia
Installed at Artspace Sydney in late 2013, the work Blood on Silk: As per instructions I was exhibited in the exhibition, Notes on the Work a survey exhibition by Ian Milliss. Here at Whitebox it was joined by As per instructions 2, 3 and 4.
As part of Milliss’ open ended practice, Ian had given instructions to other artists for the production of artworks, referencing works he made in the early 1970s. These instructions were – use strips of fabric 200 to 250mm wide each painted a single colour and then nail to the wall as you want
The three later works Blood on Silk: As per Instructions 2,3 and 4 were made in 2014 again referencing the code of the barber’s pole and its subsequent distortion or mutation. The code utilised in the first of this series is the pattern made by eight drops of blood falling from one metre.
Site Specific
The State Silk Museum, Tbilisi, Georgia
Blood on Silk: State Silk Museum, 2014, installation, silk paper, rice paper found objects, paint, stickers, video and thread, dimensions variable
The State Silk Museum founded by the natural scientist Nikolai Shavrov is one of the oldest among the world’s silk museums. The museum is located in a building, which was specially built for the Caucasian Sericulture Station in 1887 by Polish architect Alexander Shimkevich. The building has a status of a cultural heritage monument at present. The museum displays quite a versatile and multinational exposition. The collection features objects from 63 countries. Unlike other silk museums (mostly displaying only silk collections) the showing offers everything about silk and sericulture: a unique collection of cocoons (5 000 cocoons of different origins and variations); silkworm biology; special containers for silkworms and eggs (approximately 200 containers); a collection of textile artisanally produced in the Caucasus (19th century); a collection of laces produced in Germany (approximately 400 patterns); a collection of natural and chemical dyes with colored threads (dyes from 16 countries); a butterfly collection (314 butterflies of 161 species); a collection connected with a mulberry tree and etc. There is a unique library in the museum, keeping rare books dating back to the 18th-19th centuries, these books about natural sciences are in Russian, English, German, French, Italian, Rumanian, Hungarian, Chinese, Japanese, Persian, Arabian languages. Museum and library furniture made according to sketches of the architect A. Shimkevitch have preserved their authentic image until today.
Biomedical Silk Lab at Tufts University, Boston, USA
Blood on Silk: Tufts Analytical Lab, 2014, silk paper and found objects size variable. was installedin the silk analytical lab for two and a half days
This was not a public exhibition – it could only be seen by those who worked in this particular set of scientific laboratories within the silk laboratory at Tufts University Boston where they ‘.. study the use of silk as an optical material for applications in biomedical engineering, photonics and nanophotonics’
This installation intervened into a process necessary and common within science, that of moving and reorganising equipment from one space to another. In transition a stack of materials lay in the middle of the floor of the analytical laboratory This floor to ceiling installation of silk paper framed this pile of stuff refocusing on the ephemeral nature of the administrative process within the practice of the scientific method. On the last day everything had been moved on leaving a solitary Allen key within the space designated by the silk paper.
