MA interim show installation
Reclaimed and found materials: copper pipe, copper & steel wire, lead, wood, steel, tissue paper, sugar paper, brown paper, bubble-wrap, netting, twine, sisal, wool, fabric, cling film, chicken wire, broken headphones, cardboard tube, inner tyre tube, aluminium, plastic pipe, tape, mug. Also: plaster, scrim, beeswax, microcrystalline wax
2017
Photos by John Taylor
Fiona’s interim installation ‘Matter in Flux’ developed over 3 months. This slideshow charts the stages of its creation and takedown. It was ambitious in scale, animated, playful and expansive, created mainly from found and discarded materials, organic and manufactured, inspired by microscopic phenomena – especially particles of spiders’ webs. Fiona was exploring connections between line, growth and energy, weaving a drawing in space, treating line as object – a hybrid that extends line from plane as 3d form, blurring boundaries between sculpture, drawing and installation. The outcome was in a state of becoming. Referred to in the title, matter (life) is always in a state of flux.
Its evolution - the process of collecting materials, working on site, making (even recording and take down) is intrinsic to the work, as site- specific. The reclaimed aspect relates partly to the issue of waste – utilising and recycling. It belongs to a wider subject of our relationship with matter, nature, and ourselves. Our global problem of waste and excess is presented in Bataille’s ‘Accursed Share’ and Mike Davis’ ‘Planet of Slums’. Fiona is interested in concepts of energy, vitalism, and transformation. She is trying to convey in my work the scientific fact that there is energy in everything. In ‘Wonders of Life’ Brian Cox explains that there is a connection between everything that has lived, as in the Chaos theory. Vitalism, dating back to Aristotle, is a notion (with philosophical and scientific strands) that there is an unknown ‘vital force’ which, together with matter and form, brings life into being. This piece, and the energy I exerted in creating it, was a metaphor for the life force.
© Copyright Fiona Campbell. All rights reserved, 2021
Video Slideshow of installation and takedown