MONASH UNIVERSITY MUSEUM OF ART
MEDIA KIT
Fiona Connor:
Wallworks
Commissioning curator: Charlotte Day
Co-ordinating curator: Patrice Sharkey
Exhibition dates
18 July – 20 September 2014
Opening function: Saturday 19 July 2014, 3-5pm
With opening remarks by Professor Edwina Cornish,
Provost and Senior Vice-President, Monash University
INTRODUCTION
Wallworks is the first major solo exhibition in Australia by Los Angelesbased, New Zealand-born artist Fiona Connor. Quoting existing architectural
languages in her installations and sculptures, Connor considers how context
and display can condition our perception of an object or artwork.
Recent projects have documented vernacular structures from outside the
gallery, while others consider the architecture and display mechanisms of
the gallery/museum itself. These explorations include presenting replicas
of real-estate signs encountered in a local neighbourhood inside an empty
apartment (Signs that change buildings 2014) and partially reproducing
the grand marble staircase at the entrance to the Hammer Museum, Los
Angeles, inside the museum’s foyer (Lobbies on Wilshire 2012).
Ground Floor, Building F
Monash University, Caulfield Campus
900 Dandenong Road
Caulfield East VIC 3145 Australia
Commissioned by MUMA, the museum wide exhibition Wallworks sees
Connor work with the Monash University Collection to playfully upend the
conventions of museum display. Recreating the location and installation of a
number of artworks that hang in offices, lecture theatres and public spaces
across the university’s campuses, Wallworks provides an intimate look at the
life of artwork after entering an institutional collection.
In this process of remaking, Connor imitates many of the functions of the
museum: from documenting, cataloguing and art handling, to designing and
curating. Her ambitious project reflects on the everyday life of art beyond the
confines of the white cube, while investigating the methodologies and politics
behind the preservation, display and distribution of institutional collections.
The exhibition includes artwork by Buyuwuy, Marianne Baillieu, Noel
Counihan, Geoff Lowe, Bertram MacKennal, Michael Nicholls, John Olson
and Trevor Vickers.
For Wallworks, I am looking at what happens after an artwork is released
from the ownership of its creator. Once it has been acquired by a third
body it starts a new life. This is not a negative per se: art depends on its
circulation – it lives in the real world and is always engaged in a relationship
with its context.
Fiona Connor
www.monash.edu.au/muma
Telephone +61 3 9905 4217
muma@monash.edu
Tues – Fri 10am – 5pm; Sat 12 – 5pm
Fiona Connor
Box of wall labels found in collection storage
Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne
photo: Andrew Curtis
MONASH UNIVERSITY MUSEUM OF ART
FIONA CONNOR: WALLWORKS
Artist biography
Following studies at Elam School of Fine Arts, Auckland, Fiona Connor
completed a Master of Fine Arts at California Institute for the Arts, Los
Angeles, between 2009 and 2011. Recent exhibitions include: Mom am I
Barbarian?,13th Istanbul Biennial, 2013; SCAPE 7, Public Art Christchurch
Biennial, 2013; Bare Use, 1301PE, Los Angeles, 2013; Made in L.A.,
2012, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Murals and Print, Various Small
Fires, Los Angeles, 2012; and Untitled (Mural Design), Dunedin Public
Art Gallery, 2012. In 2010 Connor was a finalist for New Zealand's
most prestigious contemporary art award, the Walters Prize, and was
featured in NEW10 at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA),
Melbourne.
Symposium
Rooms for thought:
radical uses of museum collections
12 –13 September 2014
To coincide with Wallworks, MUMA, in association with Monash Art
Design & Architecture (MADA), will present a symposium featuring invited
academics, artists and curators to discuss ways in which museum
collections can be radically used in the twenty-first century.
Keynote Speakers: Jaroslaw Suchan, Director, Museum Sztuki, Poland, and
Dr Clementine Deliss, Director, Weltkulturen Museum, Germany.
Followed by a keynote lecture by Charles Esche, Director,
Van Abbemuseum, Netherlands, in October.
See MUMA’s website for details: www.monash.edu.au/muma
MEDIA
For all media enquiries please contact Alicia Renew on 03 9905 1618 or
Alicia.Renew@monash.edu
CATALOGUE
The exhibition will be supported by a full-colour publication featuring new
essays by Liv Barrett, writer and Director of Château Shatto, Los Angeles,
and Tara McDowell, Associate Professor and Director, Curatorial Practice,
Monash University.
Above: Fiona Connor
Mount Gabriel, Ruby and Ash 2012
Installation view, Hopkinson Mossman
Auckland. Photo: Alex North
Below: Fiona Connor
Untitled (Mural Design) 2012
Installation view, Dunedin Public Art Gallery
Photo: Bill Nichol
Above: Fiona Connor
Mount Gabriel, Ruby and Ash 2012
190 Wallace Rd, Mangere, Auckland
Photo: Alex North
Below: Fiona Connor
Lobbies on Wilshire 2012
Installation view, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles
Photo: Joshua White
All images courtesy of the artist and Hopkinson
Mossman, Auckland.