Last month I put up a brief post about Fiona’s forthcoming exhibition, “Local Artist”.
Earlier today I took a trip south from Bristol to see what turned out to be Fiona’s really rather wonderful exhibition. Her range of work has expanded considerably and now encompasses pieces that have a sly and disquieting humour I’ve not associated with her work in the past. I knew that Fiona has for many years been inspiration by her connections with the agricultural land around her home village on the edge of the Mendips. however, the catalogue suggests she’s also been inspired by the village itself. The former makes perfect sense but I can’t help wondering if the later applies to what to me is new too her work, her “Hay Dolls”. Given the qualities of these extraordinary pieces, I can’t help wondering about her neighbours or about just what they might make of these pieces in the exhibition?
If anyone reading this can get to see Fiona’s work I would highly recommend you do so. Andelli Art is just outside Wells – Upper Breach, South Horrington Village, Wells BA5 3QG. A perfect setting for a highly unusual body of work. I only wish I could have visited the exhibition with Lois Williams, who of all the artists I know would most appreciate Fiona’s use of materials. Unfortunately Lois lives in North Wales, far too far to travel to see the exhibition.
What particularly struck me, perhaps because I’ve not seen that side of Fiona’s work before, were the various pieces she entitles “Hay Dolls”. These somehow manage – at least for me and for the most part – to be both almost endearingly straightforward and, at one and the same time, somehow decidedly uncanny. They have that wonderful sense of both the immediacy and the imaginative open-ended-ness of, say, Japanese Yōkai spirit figures (as my daughter pointed out at once on seeing the catalogue), or else those strange twilight characters out of old European folk tales. (The “Doll” pieces all sold very quickly which, from my point of view, is just as well because otherwise I’d have been tempted to buy one for my granddaughter. Although she’d have had to wait a few years to have it – both for her sake – too uncanny for a six-year-old – and mine).
The exhibition also includes a variety of other fairly ‘minimal’ sculptural works and includes a number of drawings, of which the two large “Furrow” pieces are particularly impressive. I was also very taken by the two “Quilt” pieces and the five works in the Tithe Series, all of which use recycled cloth, hay, and other abject materials to make objects of considerable quiet presence.