Fiona Hall wins prestigious art prize

16 Sep 2011, 12:46 pm   -   By: Michelle Hanna
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Hall has developed a distinctly delicate environmental aesthetic in her photographs and sculptural installations. (Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery)

Hall has developed a distinctly delicate environmental aesthetic in her photographs and sculptural installations. (Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery)

Australian artist Fiona Hall has been honoured as the recipient of one of Australia's most prestigious art awards from the Melbourne Art Foundation.

Australian artist Fiona Hall was last night honoured as the recipient of one of Australia's most prestigious art awards from the Melbourne Art Foundation.

At a gala dinner held at the Art Gallery of NSW in Sydney, actress Cate Blanchett presented the distinguished practitioner with the Artist Award in acknowledgement of Hall's prolific body of work.

Over 40 years, Hall has developed a distinctly delicate environmental aesthetic in her photographs and sculptural installations. Her works are often informed by the research of scientists and historians with whom she works closely. They reveal layers of meaning about the impact of humanity on the natural environment, particularly through the after-effects of colonialism and global trade.

Guest speaker Suhanya Raffel from the Queensland Art Gallery said that Hall "has a great empathy for our lived world. Essentially an optimist, her glass is always half full."

"With a deep love of the natural world, an abundance of ideas and a total generosity of spirit as a human being, we could not ask for more from an artist, for she is an inspiration," said Raffel.

Hall's works have been exhibited in major solo exhibitions in Sydney, Brisbane and Adelaide in recent years.

Some of her signature series include the popular aluminium and steel sardine tins with delicate botanical sculptures sitting atop; and a series of skeletal leaves drawn onto old bank notes that are no longer in currency - statements about the transient values held towards the natural environment in the context of global trade.

Awards convener and CEO and Director of Heide Museum of Modern Art, Jason Smith told SBS that Hall's work has always been in the public interest of the natural environment.

"Her work has been concerned with environmental degradation, the endangered species and the deterioration of our environments well before they became political issues."

"On the one hand she talks about very political things, but she uses everyday materials. So we recognise the materials - sardine cans, bank notes, video tape that she knits into Mickey Mouse forms and body parts”, says Smith. “But they all have a serious message about environmental fragility."

Hall, who admitted to the arts audience that she works more out of her kitchen than her studio, said she was thrilled to be acknowledged by the industry for her work.

Accepting the Award, she reflected on a career of creating art that has given her extraordinary adventures, with her most recent "fantastic and strange experience'' being a trip on a New Zealand Navy Ship to the Karmadec Trench off New Zealand. 

One of nine artists from the South Pacific region who travelled to the fault line, Hall said that in light of so much earthquake volatility around the world in recent times, this was "a trip with both an art and a serious environmental agenda".  Along with the artists from the trip, she will exhibit her work about this natural marine environment in an exhibition at the Tauranga Art Gallery in New Zealand in November this year.

For Hall, this will be another instalment in her ongoing conversation in her art practice between herself and the beautiful, natural world as it is troubled by human activity.

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