|
Fiona Kinsella
Field Notes: sweet fresh (swoon)
Ivan Jurakic, Curator, Cambridge Galleries,
2006
he discovery of
the subconscious in the early 20th
century was seized upon by artists and writers
as a means of unlocking and exploring this
repressed and previously uncharted inner
territory. André Breton launched Surrealism in
the 1920s as an artistic movement bent on
exploring unconscious imagery through techniques
of automatic writing, bricolage and assemblage.
Assemblage juxtaposed found objects to suggest
an irrational view of the world. Meret Oppenheim
made Le Dejeuner en Fourrure by covering
a tea cup, saucer and spoon in fur. In America,
Joseph Cornell collected and arranged Victorian
detritus and bric-à-brac in small wooden boxes
and containers to create enigmatic compositions
– sculpted poems.
Fiona Kinsella’s artwork bridges
the subconscious symbolism of the Surrealists
with the ritualistic liturgy of the Catholic
mass and its vast canon of saints and martyrs.
Pieces like (cake) Wound I (Sebastian)
and (cake) Wound II (St. Agnes) evoke
sacred little worlds made out of items collected
in junk shops or found during the artist’s
travels. A random sampling of materials; Royal
icing, skin, scab, hat pins, silver fork, teeth,
handmade doily, lamb’s wool, hair of a man and a
woman, fondant icing.
Like her
Victorian predecessors, the artist has a habit
of collecting human hair. In the 19th
century human hair was often braided into
wreaths and framed or made into cameos and
broaches as mementos to remember loved ones or
to honour the recently deceased. The ritualistic
quality of this sort of personalized memorial
has fallen sharply out of favour in our secular
society where mourning has been politely
sanitized.
The artist’s work
also shares a common ancestry with the
historical wunderkammer, a cabinet of
anthropological curiosities, artefacts and
ephemera. Each vitrine displays a similarly
eccentric collection of oddities that have been
amassed both locally and abroad; a lost and
found of disposable cultural artefacts
juxtaposed beside personal and bodily effects
that recall nature-morte; allegorical
still-life.
Each is
reminiscent of a sacred space, a saint’s shrine
or reliquary. The emu eggs of (swoon) and
the traditional wedding icing used in the
(cake) series are emblematic of the human
body; a brittle, ephemeral shell that will fall
apart unless handled with great care. Both
represent purity and the symbolic passage from
one station of life into another; from birth and
childhood into adulthood or marriage, and
inevitably, death.
In Europe, it is
nearly impossible to visit a cathedral without a
shrine to an obscure martyr or miracle worker
who has been venerated or blessed. There are
only two such shrines in Canada; Saint Joseph's
Oratory in Montreal houses the relics of Brother
André (Le Sacré-Cœur de Frère André), and
the Martyr’s Shrine in Midland honours eight
Jesuits from the mission of Sainte-Marie among
the Hurons. Delicately encased behind glass,
these relics move us to reflect upon our finite
time in this world. Fiona Kinsella’s artwork
similarly functions as memento-mori, reminders
of our mortality and our longing for the
unknown.
sweet fresh
(swoon)
The exhibition
runs from January 28 – March 12,
2006
From the exhibition foreword by Ivan Jurakic,
Curator.
Reprinted courtesy of Cambridge Galleries.
|
