Output details

Disastrous Situations (Wreckage), The 9th International Kaunas Biennial, UNITEXT

Building on the concerns developed in Output 1, ‘Disastrous Situations’, comprises a large-scale sculptural installation examining notions of ‘aftermath and wreckage’ in relation to a continued exploration of the seductive power of media representations of violence and destruction (ppt:2-10). The work constructs a narrative illusion that you are being transported via your TV to the latest media news story; or is it a film set? Kill Bill meets South Park, The Shining via The Wizard of Oz and then back again through Bowling for Columbine.

Emerging from a series of previous exhibits and experiments (ppt:18-30;), the work uses humour, theatricality, mediatised narrative constructions and craft techniques, avoiding the clichés of much contemporary ‘Boy Art’ by complicating the artifact, challenging received ideas of masculinity and muddling ‘male’ and ‘female’ signifiers, embracing Sontag’s delineation of camp in, 'Notes on “Camp”'(1964). In its entropy and formlessness this body of work is informed by Robert Morris’s ‘Anti-form’, (1968) specifically referring to his Felt works and works such as ‘Scatter Piece’, (1968). In the fabrication of the installations this context is coupled with Fisher’s continued exploration of the subversive potential of textile craft techniques. Fisher’s aim here is twofold; firstly, to interrogate the gendered nature of the formal languages of both Modernist and Pre-Modernist sculptural traditions, and secondly, to explore new ways of working with this freshly dismantled vocabulary.

Fisher was one of 22 international artists selected from 447 applications representing 65 countries to participate in the competitive section of UNITEXT, the 9th Kaunas International Biennial (ppt:12-17). The Biennial’s aims are to create conditions for immediate collisions of an artwork and a spectator, allowing the experience of art as a universal text, inviting artists to present works, experiences of which are based on a direct confrontation with an object / space / semantic field.