The Drawing Room, The Beaney House of Art & Knowledge, Coventry UK until 14th August 2016
Tag: artist
Transcultural Exchange 2016
I’ve just come back from Boston where I attended the Transcultural Exchange 2016, an international conference on opportunities in the arts. As part of the programme I chaired a roundtable discussion about artists working with medicine. Much to my surprise a reasonably sized crowd of about forty people participated and I was really excited by the generosity and willingness to encourage everyone to share their voice and experiences. It was a great way to start the conference and also meant that as a relative unknown I met and got to know a large number of the conference participants through this process. All in all something I can totally recommend
Haemoglobin colour scale used by the WHO since 1995
The limits of how we can talk about the transfomative nature of art?
Had a weird misunderstanding recently where I assumed it was possible to start a discussion about the transformative nature of art by using my art practice as an example. It started me thinking about a really old post from last year about the process where the post art making conversations sparked by the presence of my art about the death of my father were such an important part of my practice. In other words it’s as if my art and the engagement of the viewers with it is how the conversation starts that may or not be transformative.
Here’s part of that post again below
‘While an element of my practice has always been an engagement with community in the process of producing art, I reflected that often for me the production of the physical art object whether it be sound, video, installation, object whatever is then layered with additional engagement by a community post production. The physical work ” the art’ serves as a touch stone or means of putting an idea to a group or individual and then watching and waiting for the response. This process of engagement mostly in terms of conversation then becomes a totally ephemeral un-documented art work in its own right layered on top of the initial physical art.
My formative experience of this process was by accident. I hadn’t thought it through. I hadn’t designed it in any way. Following the medicalised death of my father I made an installation in the church of the town where he grew up. Aberdeen in NSW is a former meat works town of about 1500, now a dormitory suburb for the coal mines further down the valley. I had originally approached the rector about putting an installation in the church hall and his response was suggesting moving it into the church. Coincidentally on the day I opened the show the town’s pumpkin festival was being celebrated in the closed off street next to the church. That resulted in a lot of people coming to the exhibition without it being a big deal for them and coming almost by accident. With every group that came in I talked about the background to the installation i.e. the death and dying of my father. Nearly all of the visitors told me in response stories from their lives about when they watched and waited as someone died in intensive care, in emergency, at home wherever. These stories were the response that would not be shared between us without the physical presence of the art installation combined with the stories I told of my father’s death.
Video of Blood on Silk: Price taker, price maker
Click for the link to a you tube video of the work
Fiona Davies Blood on Silk: Price taker, price maker,
2015 found objects, sound video and print 420 x 220 x 80cm
Don’t forget to turn the sound up
Installed at the Drabee Road Nursery, Kandos, NSW. Australia as part of Cementa_15. April 2015
Sound recorded at the Narellan Library – Space Digital Studios provided by Camden Council
Sound recording technician: Christopher Fulham
Voice: Stephen Nutt
Video screens on loan from Campbelltown Arts Centre
Video Alex Gooding
Video of the installation Blood on Silk: Trade conflated with Blood on Silk: Campbelltown as installed at Campbelltown Arts Centre 2014
As per Instructions: 1,2,3 and 4, 2013 and 2014 canvas, paint and nails

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.
photo credit Alex Wisser