My Newest Favourite Thing: Fiona Hall's Wrong Way Time

I have seen the works of Fiona Hall before. I think she is innovative and creative with an ability to execute her ideas in an engaging manner. In 2015 her exhibition Wrong Way Time attracted global attention at the Venice Biennale, and the following year I was lucky enough to see it at the National Gallery of Australia, complemented by a collection of Hall's works mainly from the NGA collection.

In Wrong Way Time, Fiona Hall brings together hundreds of elements, each embedded with layers of meaning. Together, the works focus powerfully on the intersecting themes of global conflict, world finances and the environment, which Hall perceives as a "minefield of madness, badness and sadness in equal measure."

Sasha Grishin wrote in The Canberra Times, "The exhibition's 800 items are presented within a darkened space, with walls painted black, as part of a deeply immersive installation. It is a troubling, dark, gothic experience, where the artist appears as a shaman who, through alchemy, transforms the materials drawn from a commonly experienced reality into mystical and wondrous creations. Wall-pieces create an outer boundary and vitrines, which are set up as wunderkammer-like cases or cabinets of curiosities, frame the central space that is occupied by the installation All the King's men."

This installation includes twenty sculptures, knitted out of shredded camouflage fabric from military uniforms of various countries. Ghostly vestigial bodies hang from oversized disfigured heads, forming a disturbing group that represents the foot-soldiers who are casualties of conflict regardless of nationality. Teeth, bones, horns and found objects adorn the mask-like heads and their spectral skeletal bodies. 

According to curator of the NGA, Leigh Robb, "It is an exemplary manifestation of Hall's maverick powers of material transformation and is the culmination of decades of conceptual and material investigation... These hollow people of war and conflict represent the many who have fallen and those who are yet to fall in the name of nationhood. Fiona Hall has shaped the course of Australian art history. Her enduring vision will help us to understand ourselves, each other and these uncertain times."

Sasha Grishin continues, "A major artistic strategy in Hall's repertoire is that of 'bricolage', where the artist improvises with the materials at hand. It is a sort of DIY approach to art making, where the artist will take aluminium sardine and fish tins, US dollar bills, as well as other foreign banknotes, old clocks, model aeroplanes and ships, damaged books, a carburettor, car light and radiator hose, light switches, driftwood, pool balls, mobile phones, camouflage military garments, deer teeth, a zebra hoof, credit cards, bones and horns, together with coal, bread, perfume bottles and living spiders and employs these to create alternative realities. The French term 'bricolgae' comes from the verb 'bricoler' (to tinker) and in some ways this characterises this artist's method of work."

In Tender she slices up US dollar bills to become the threads out of which to build beautifully designed and realised bird's nests. The banknotes are woven into an 86-piece installation accurately replicating the nests of extinct birds from areas logged by American interests. The nests are now bird-less, silent and deserted. The title itself plays with an array of associations from 'legal tender' to emotional tenderness. 

To make Tender, Hall paid face value for thousands of US dollars and sliced them up to weave the nests. As the US dollar is the most valued currency in Third World countries, this work suggests people hunting for the dollar like a bird scavenging for materials to build its nest. The artists is also commenting on one of the prices paid for capitalism - the destruction of the environment. 

Speaking about Tender in 2006, Fiona Hall said, "I knew that shredding the American dollar was for me conceptually an act of revenge for the sorry state our world is in. I don't mean to direct my wrath towards that to the United States alone, but it's the inevitability of the globalised world that we live in that the environment is under enormous pressure. Socially and globally suddenly we are aware of that in a way that we weren't five years ago when I was still making that work.

"It's amazing how quickly the tide has changed. The power of the greenback has really faded in the last few years. Now the greenback suddenly has perhaps come to represent a world and a system that is foundering; a system that used to be watertight and isn't any longer. Now with the financial downturn globally and with all the other political events of the last few years that have changed the idea of America as being a figurehead nation for the rest of the world to aspire to - all of that has changed in the minds of so many of us and I think that our regard of the American dollar in that context is different now."

The work explores the complex relationship between the natural world and human systems of value, trade and exchange. Hall combines the empirical knowledge of a scientist working in the natural sciences, the creative associative imagination of the artist, together with an obsessive and manual dexterity and technical precision.

Another example of her work combining the natural world with capitalism is Leaf Litter (1999-2003) in which paper money or bank notes are used as canvases for delicate x-ray-like paintings of leaves. While money is the bottom line in our contemporary economy and overrides crucial environmental concerns, plants are often the raw material for generating income (and money, made from paper, is also produced from plants). Fiona Hall's witty and elegant work captures this perfectly.

Also adding to the Venice exhibition is the earlier work, Paradisus terrestris (1989-90), made from sardine tins and aluminium cans over a fifteen year period. These otherwise discarded materials have been transformed into beautiful objects as each sardine tin has been wound down to reveal within an embossed depiction of the human form. At the top of the tin grows botanically correct representations of flora; the plant and the body interconnected in form. The connection we as humans have with our natural world is emphasised through ideas of fertility and reproduction, growth and natural cycles.

Holdfast (Macrosystis angustifolia; giant kelp)

As seen in Holdfast (Macrosystis angustifolia; giant kelp), part of the object emulates the natural and jagged textures of foliage, seen branching outwards, growing from the unraveling tin can. The text imprinted on the tin is a jarring reminder of the artificiality of the sculpture.

In a similar vein, endangered marine species have been hand-carved out of single sardine tins and each painted with maritime signal flags to comprise the work, Fleet. 

Fleet

Vaporised

I loved the way many of the exhibitions were displayed as items in curiosity cabinets. These cabinets of curiosities (wunderkammer) originated in Renaissance Europe as a way of cataloguing the world (or communicating one version of it). Glass cabinets also recall coffins and embalmed corpses; captured forms that we have killed so we can study. It creates a sombre atmosphere, in keeping with the subject matter. In one case (Vaporised) sits a collection of small glass perfume bottles on which are painted skulls to represent disappeared Tamils in Sri Lanka. Fiona Hall writes,

"The world is a very curious place. It's an amazing place and it's filled with curious things in the best sense of the word. And that seems to be accentuated by the way that objects have been displayed in cabinets; an innocent idea that you could actually put all these things in a museum display and you could comprehend the world. In a sense the museum cabinet makes the world somehow more incomprehensible rather than more comprehensible because you've just taken little fragments of it and conveniently left aside the context. And I find that curious as well; the implications of what's not in the cabinet; that are pointed out because of their absence; because of what has been put in the cabinet."  

I also really enjoyed the section of the exhibition, Crust, in which a series of small sculptures carved from baked bread installed on an open atlas represent various tragedies - environmental, cultural and militaristic - that occurred in the region on which it sits. One bread carving is of intricate barbed wire; another, an exploded village on a map of Syria, with tiny bricks of bread strewn across it. Dr Deborah Hart, senior curator at the National Gallery describes the sculpture as, "one of the great miracles of the show that made it through customs. Even Fiona was quite amazed that these had arrived in tact."

The exhibition investigates global politics, world finances and the environment. Other areas of interest for Hall include post-colonial issues, the relationship between culture and nature and the human condition. Hart describes Wrong Way Time as a "very dense exhibition" as it involves works made from an assortment of media including bread, banknotes, cork, aluminium and cuckoo clocks. These curious configurations speak deeply of Hall's practice, which continues to transcend fluidly without restriction.

The artist's choice of materials is never arbitrary, nor are the newly created forms. The large, dramatic wall-piece, Manuhiri (Travellers), looks from a distance like a collection of bones in the form of a strange organic installation. On closer inspection it turns out to be made from driftwood, arranged in a loose mandorla-like pattern.

The artist explains that she collected the driftwood from a beach at Awanui on New Zealand's East Cape, where the Waiapu River flows into the sea. Over-farming has led to wide-spread erosion and the trees have fallen and been swept out to sea, while the waves and tide have returned them to the shore in the form of driftwood. Manuhiri is like a shrine or graveyard of the forest, or in the artist's words, these bits of driftwood appear like "travellers from a former forest life reshaped by the ocean currents and now journeying to another life back in the world of the living."

Manuhiri (Travellers)

One of the strongest parts of the show is Kuka irititja (Animals from another time), where Hall collaborated with 12 women artists from the Tjanpi Desert Weavers of the Central and Western Desert region of Australia: Roma Butler, Stacia Lewis, Rene Nelson, Takiriya Tjawina Roberts, Angkaliya Nelson, Sandra Peterman, Yangi Yangi Fox, Molly Miller, Nyanu Watson, Rene Kulitja, Niningka Lewis and Mary Pan. These women have  long history of making animals woven from the local grasses and other materials from their country, and Fiona suggested they work together to weave a 40-piece installation representing a group of native animals, most of which are extinct in the wild. 

The work was created in June 2014 at an artist camp at a place near Pilakatilyuru (in the tri-state border region of Western Australia where it meets South Australia and the Northern Territory). The Tjanpi artists have a deep and intricate understanding of their country and were able to incorporate this knowledge into the woven pieces. They drew upon the interrelatedness of people, place and ancestral stories they call Tjukurpa (Dreaming), and from their intimate knowledge of hunting, tracks, and animal behaviour - including that of the predatory feral cat, the top killer of native Australian animals. Fiona as a non-Indigenous Australian brought her own thoughts about the impacts of colonisation on our environment and the animals that inhabit it.

Both the Tjanpi weavers and Fiona Hall share a mastery of weaving with various materials and this shared skill helped to inform the collaboration. The Tjanpi weavers harvested tjanpi (grass) and Fiona supplied Australian and British military printed camouflage fabric to incorporate into the works registering the damaging effects of British colonialisation including atomic testing in the 1950s and 60s on the fragile desert ecosystem and the lives of the Aboriginal people. The artists used each other’s fibres and also added in other found materials to create the final group of work. They are strange, whimsical creations that serve as a commentary on loss and absence.  

A woven helicopter seems incongruous until we read that Hall uses this to refer to the nuclear tests that were carried out at Maralinga by the British Government, with the agreement and support of the Australian Government, between 1952 and 1963. The toxic fallout is believed to be responsible for widespread illnesses across desert communities, the deaths of the weavers' parents and relatives, and the extinction of animal species.  

The exhibition also features several recent works on loan from the artist that were shown in dOCUMENTA 13 (2012). Kassle, Germany. These relate to endangered birds and animals from around the world. Hall reflects on the troubled times we are facing and this concern is ingrained in many of the pieces. The works from Fall Prey incorporate military camouflage material from the country in which the species is found on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) List of Threatened Species, and found objects to create curious hunting trophies; a macabre menagerie of near extinction promoting environmental vigilance.

Macromia Splendens/ splendid cruiser,France (2009-11) IUCN threat status: vulnerable

Polyommatus humedase/ Piedmont anomalous blue butterfly, Italy (2012) IUCN threat status: endangered

Cervus elaphus/ red deer, Europe, North America (2012) IUCN threat status: least concern

Another few works that stand out to me are the coal and aluminium sculpture, Untitled, with its implications of seaweed, branches, and lungs breathing pollutants that have come from natural sources, and the potato print and watercolour on khadi paper, Mob Rot, which speaks for itself in a fundamental earthy commentary on corruption and exploitation.  

Untitled (2015)

Mob Rot (2015)

Another exhibit which was not part of the Vienna Biennale, but which I enjoyed all the same, was Morality Dolls - the seven deadly sins (1984). This series of marionette dolls, based on the theme of the seven deadly sins are grotesque yet captivating, assembled from a variety of photocopied anatomical diagrams. Each figure anthropomorphises a vice, with body parts acting as metaphors for each sin. Hall's use of antique medical imagery alludes to the historic nature of these sins. The fanciful forms satirise basic human characteristics which continue to be relevant in a contemporary context. There is a sense of inexorability as these beasts are controlled by someone else pulling the strings. 

It's hard to explain the visceral hold this art has on me, as it appeals to and repels me at the same time. I will leave the last words to a local art reviewer, Sasha Grishin in the Canberra Times.

"Throughout the exhibition there is a combination of immediate high visual impact followed by a slow release of associative meanings that each individual viewer brings to the experience. Although it has become fashionable to speak of 'slow art' , where beyond the immediate 'wow factor' there lies a rich, slowly developing cultural response, Hall's art creeps along at a subversive pace. The high-[pitched dramatic, emotional and intuitive level in her art is to some extent supplemented by its cerebral and philosophical content. It is art that is simultaneously visually exciting and at times intellectually profound." 

There is one more major part of Wrong Way Time, which is Wrong Way Clocks, a body of work that I feel deserves its own post. So I'll get on to that next.

My Newest Favourite Thing: The Unicorn Tapestries

1. The Hunters Enter the Woods

Unicorns have been rather co-opted into the (predominantly female) childish world of sparkly pink and rainbows. But they used to be magical creatures of mystery and influence. And they used to symbolise, among other things, chivalry, purity and Christianity.

A famous series of seven tapestries, The Hunt of the Unicorn or La Chasse à la licorne, dates from the late Middle Ages and shows a group of noblemen or hunters in pursuit of a unicorn through an idealised French landscape. The tapestries were woven in wool, metallic threads, and silk - the vibrant colours were produced from dye plants: weld (yellow); madder (red) and woad (blue). They were probably woven between 1495 and 1505 in Brussels, which was an important centre of the tapestry industry in Medieaval Europe. Whereas wool was widely produced in the rural areas around Brussels, and a common primary material in tapestry weaving, the silk was costly and hard to obtain, indicating the wealth and social status of the owner.

First recorded in 1680 in the Paris home of the Rochefoucauld family, the tapestries were looted during the French Revolution, rediscovered in a barn in the 1850s, and now hang in The Cloisters in New York. The tapestries themselves are the subject of intense scholarly debate about the meaning of their iconography, the identity of the artists who designed them, and even the order in which they are meant to be hung. Although various theories have been put forward, there is no definitive answer as to their provenance, and their dramatic but conflicting narratives have inspired multiple readings. 

2. The Unicorn is Found

According to Wikipedia, "One theory is that the tapestries show pagan and Christian symbolism. The pagan themes emphasise the medieaval lore of beguiled lovers, whereas Christian writings interpret the unicorn ad its death as the Passion of Christ. The unicorn has long been identified by Christian writers as a symbol of Christ. conscripting the traditionally pagan symbolism of the unicorn. The original pagan myths about The Hunt of the Unicorn refer to an animal with a single horn that can only be tamed by a virgin; Christian scholars translated this into an allegory for Christ's relationship with the Virgin Mary". 

In Gothic tapestry, the makers considered biblical events as 'historical' and linked the biblical and secular narratives in the tapestry weaving. Medieaval art illustrated moral principles, and the tapestries used narrative allegories to illustrate these morals. The secular unicorn hunt was not simply Christian art, but also an allegorical representation of the Annunciation.

3. The Unicorn is Attacked

There is some speculation that the unicorn tapestries were commissioned to celebrate a marriage - as medieaval poets connected the taming of the unicorn to the devotion and subjugation of love. The taming of the unicorn, therefore, symbolises the secular lover who was enchained by a virgin and trapped in the fence (in the tapestry The Unicorn in Captivity) - this all seems rather brutal and dominating, but apparently the concept of an overlapping God of Heaven and God of love was accepted in the late Middle Ages. 

Different interpretations lead to different titles and different sequences in which it is suggested the tapestries should be hung. The tapestries are different sizes and some suggest that they were designed for use as a bedroom ensemble, with the five large pieces fitting the back area of wall, while the other two pieces serve as the coverlet or overhead canopy. Others contend that the first and last may be independent works or form a different series entirely. 

4. The Unicorn Defends Itself

Whatever the interpretation, the tapestries are glorious and  rich in floral imagery, featuring the 'millefleurs' background style of a variety of small botanic elements. Invented by the weavers of the Gothic age, this style became popular during the late Medieaval era and declined after the early Renaissance. There are more than a hundred plants represented in the tapestries, scattered across the green backgrounds of the panels, most of which (85) have been identified by botanists according to a paper published in 1983. This paper maintains that the particular flowers featured in the tapestries reflect the tapestries' major themes and represent not only a secular, physical, enclosed garden (hortus conclusus), but also a connection with the Annunication.

5. The Mystic Capture of the Unicorn

If these tapestries look familiar, they probably are. Replicas of them can be found in all sorts of places in film and television, ranging from Spiderman: Far from Home to Family Guy and Once Upon a Time. They appear in the 1988 film, Some Girls, the 1993 film, The Secret Garden, and a French advert for cheese. Children's authors, science fiction short story writers, folk musicians and Leonard Cohen have all woven them into their artistic creations. In Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, the last tapestry in the series, The Unicorn in Captivity, is seen in the various common rooms (Gryffindor, Slytherin, Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff) with different-coloured backgrounds. 

The Unicorn is Killed and Brought to the Castle

And now there are fantastic recreations adorning the walls of the Queen's Inner Hall at Stirling Castle, after a thirteen-year project to reweave the tapestries. They were never known to have been in the castle, but there is thought to have a been a series like it. Only the very wealthiest of people could afford tapestries, and an inventory shows that James V had a large collection including two sets which showed unicorns. A two-million-pound project saw two teams of three weavers recreating the tapestries and results in visitors to Stirling Castle being able to imagine something of the atmosphere of Scotland's royal court. 

The Unicorn is in Captivity and No Longer Dead

An exhibition at the castle tells the story of the recreation and explains how the tapestries were worked in the Medieval way, using a technique whereby the warp thread comes down, the weft thread is picked out, threaded through the warp, and packed down with the bobbin - I love the terminology as much as the painstaking process (The Unicorn in Captivity alone took two years to weave, working from right to left) and watching a video of the intricate art is truly incredible.

   

A selection of samples

To develop a greater understanding of the thread types, colour palette and weaving techniques used by the original weavers, several hundred samples were made by the weavers of the new Hunt of the Unicorn tapestries. The sample of a single hunter's knee on the bottom row was the first sample to be made and was woven at eight warps per centimetre, which is the warp count of the original 15th Century tapestries. This was done to calculate the commission cost of the full set of seven tapestries. The adjacent sample of two knees was woven at four warps per centimetre (which is what was used for the new tapestries) and saved thirteen years of production time. 

Some of the threads on bobbins

In the sample showing two knees the blending of colours in the left knee uses a traditional technique: separate threads of different colours are combined to create different tones. The blending of colours on the right knee has been made using a contemporary method where different coloured threads are blended together before weaving. The whole thing is quite remarkable and I felt extremely humbled by the dedication and the magnitude of the project. My little cross-stitches are nothing in comparison, but I still love the focus on a small section of canvas which, with individual stitches, brings an image to life. I'm sure that has to be a metaphor for something... Life's rich tapestry, perhaps? 

Blue and green should never be seen...