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Fiona MacDonald

Works from the mirrored series 2009-2011

10 Gresham Street, London EC2N 2BQ

22 September 2011 - 22 January 2012

Since 2009 Fiona MacDonald has been making a series of paintings and sculptures that reference historical works of art. The paintings are based on significant sculptures, in a direct mirroring of the sculptures based on paintings, interrogating what happens in the translation of object to image and vice versa.

The motion and superabundance of Baroque sculpture is in evidence in works based on Titian, Bernini and Tintoretto. The excessive or superabundant is a quality MacDonald has pursued in diverse ways over the years: how it tips into decay, how it relates to taste, how the decorative pushes up against the visceral. With the dissolving weight of silicone rubber in her sculptures, or thick sweeps and drips of oil paint, the weight of the work’s materiality is deliciously present.

The unfolding of events over time in variant perspectives is key; Rebecca Geldard notes the work’s ‘curiously time-based energy, the tandem sense of growth and decomposition implying movement - the shudder in and out of technological fast-forward and rewind.’ MacDonald’s works have a sense of being still in formation – of being ‘caught in the act’ of an ongoing process.

Fiona MacDonald has recently been awarded the prestigious Abbey Fellowship in Painting and will be working for three months at the British School at Rome from October. In 2010 MacDonald made a duo exhibition with eminent sculptor Phyllida Barlow at CoExist Gallery Southend, and with Berlin artist Anne Gathmann at Phoenix Gallery in Exeter. Here solo shows include Morphology, at Maddox Arts 2009, Anthropoflora at Long & Ryle 2007 and Habitat, at Phoenix Brighton, 2006.

CoExist, at TAP Southend

Phyllida Barlow and Fiona MacDonald

7 October - 5 November 2010

Engagement with the physicality of their materials combined with a strong painterly essence is the terrain shared by Phyllida Barlow and Fiona MacDonald. The dialogue created between their two practices raises thoughts of weight, space, movement, gesture, theatricality and un-monumentality, both physically within the context of the space and also within an object.

Click here for a blog with video interviews of Phyllida, Jon and myself

18 June - 10 July 2010

DORIS

Nicky Coutts, John Holland, Fiona MacDonald, Liz Murray

at Stedefreund Berlin

www.stedefreund-berlin.de

14 May - 5 July 2010

A Point in the Field

Anne Gathmann and Fiona MacDonald

Phoenix Gallery, Exeter

This exhibition brings together two artists who share a desire to represent the underlying ambiguities they find in objects. Together, they reveal a perception that everything visible is in a state of flux and uncertainty, where ‘becoming’ describes a state of being, one that embraces continuous evolution. Berlin based Anne Gathmann’s delicate interventions into public spaces bring to the fore subtle architectural details that are not immediately apparent, highlighting the instability of our spatial perceptions. Her works on paper – flooded with wet paint till they wrinkle and rebel against their two dimensions – give substance (or an illusion of substance) to the ephemeral and unseen.

London based Fiona MacDonald’s interconnected paintings and sculptures rarely directly represent nature, but are inspired by its diversity and uncanny coincidences. The inhabited, totemic presence is key to her work and choice of motif, and suggests a direct link between form and meaning. For MacDonald, morphology and the process of evolution act as a mirror to artistic production. The dynamic compositions of her new semi-figurative works feed into the sense of ‘being’ in motion.

The exhibition was accompanied by a publication with dialogue by the artists and an essay by writer and critic Rebecca Geldard.

www.exeterphoenix.org.uk

May 27th 2010 - 13th June 2010
Unnatural Selection

Londonewcastle Project Space, 28 Redchurch Street E2 7DP

Adam Ball, Caroline List, Freya Douglas-Morris
Fiona MacDonald, Sam Jury, Christopher Stevens

We are all familiar with Darwin's theory of natural selection, whereby evolution is determined by favourable heritable traits. This is how organisms survive and thrive or else become redundant and hence extinct. Unnatural Selection as the title suggests is concerned with the distortion and perversion of this order of things.

www.unnatural-selection.co.uk

Morphology 26.03.09 - 02.05.09

Maddox Arts, 52 Brooks Mews, London W1K 4ED

Morphology is the study of the form or shape of an organism, but also suggests the idea of one thing morphing into another. In evolutionary terms morphological development throws up unexpected parallels and confluences. For the artist, this acts as a mirror to the act of painting. From the simple to the complex, rational to the rococo, this act of transformation in formal terms results in expanding multiplicities of form, and thereby of content.

The works connect and reconnect through colour and form. An almost Klein blue bleeds into several paintings, serving in one as a barely believable sky, reappearing as the electric veins of a biomorphic structure in another.

MacDonald's sculptures often explore forms that are closely allied – the series 'Resemblance' consists of four hanging, baroquely ornamented spheres, whose titles reveal very different sources - a morel mushroom - a hanging basket of summer flowers - a white blood cell - a shower puff.

Istanbul 2009

WHO IS TELLING THE STORY

Fiona MacDonald. Gaia Persico. George Young

Ben Cain. Alicia Paz. Andro Semeiko.

Yu Chen Wang. David Blandy

Basement 2nd edition with text by

Alasdair Duncan. Georgia Corossi. NIcholas Vaughan.

Project part One:

Galata Perform, Istanbul

10-14 September 2009

Project Part Two:

October 8-10 2009

1st International Artists Initiative

Organised by Istanbul 2010 European Capital of Culture

Anthropoflora 28.6.07 - 20.7.07
Long & Ryle, 4 John Islip Street, London SW1

Habitat March - May 2006
Phoenix Gallery, Brighton

Habitat was a mixed media site specific installation for Phoenix - a dystopian but still beautiful post apocalyptic garden. The idyllic feel created by the sound of rippling water and the artificial garden setting was repeatedly interrupted by artifacts that suggested a presence other than the viewer. Humorous though these interventions were, they had an underlying threat.