FIONA CONNOR
Fiona Connor was born in Tāmaki Makaurau; she lives and works in Los Angeles. Connor received a Bachelor of Fine Arts through Elam School of Fine Arts and her Masters in Fine Arts through California Institute of the Arts in 2011. Recent solo exhibitions include New Low (Rampart), New Low, Los Angeles (2020); Closed for installation, Fiona Connor, SculptureCenter, #4, Sculpture Centre, New York (2019); and #8, Closed for installation, Sequence of events, Succession, Vienna (2019). In 2015 Connor founded Laurel Doody Library Supply, an ongoing initiative to support artists publishing on a small scale.
LIGHT ENOUGH TO READ BY.
Fiona Connor, Lucy Skaer, Rachel Shearer and Cathy Livermore June 2021
Light enough to read by emerged from discussions around the return of The Physics Room’s library into the gallery and to public access. For the last three years, since the shift to our current site in the Registry Additions Building, much of the library has sat in boxes. The specific needs of this shift—sufficient and natural light, space for reading, listening, and resting—offered a script for us to work with in the development of this project. Underpinning this was the idea of the exhibition itself as a form of publication, and ‘text’ as something social, material, and lived, subject to conditions of light and weather.
Works by Connor, Skaer, Shearer and Livermore open out from these ideas, transforming the gallery. A metal hare runs, runs, low to the ground, across the wood floor; daylight comes in again and the workshop doorway is open; the gallery breathes like a lung with the names of Waitaha’s winds. Each of these works rely on dynamic relationships: with grammar and syntax, ko ngā hau me ngā wai (winds and waters), architecture and light, positive and negative, chase and flight, oxygen and lungs, reader and listener, fabricator and artist, correspondent and recipient, sequence and rest.
VENICE RESEARCH
Apprendista
Research with Rosanna Albertini towards doing a project in Venice. We plan to talk and visit with local tradespeople to understand how construction projects are realised there.
BOOK WITH HOPKINSON MOSSMAN 2019
Fiona Connor’s first monographic publication is titled with a phone number, +1 310 951 9459. The book includes essays by Sarah Lehrer Graiwer, Travis Diehl, Jan Bryant, and Kimberli Meyer. Designed by Fount–via in Auckland, and printed in Aosta, Italy, it features a dual softcover, 224 pages with 112 colour and 8 black+white images. Due for release December 2019.
VARESE GROUP MARZIO 2017
Marzio was amazing. It felt like a truly special and unique time for all involved. Days were full of making work, conversations, cross pollination and thinking about the future of the project.
After you and I saw each other I continued to get settled and start germinating some projects. Eventually I got a rental car and the guests started to arrive from overseas and locally. During the collective period we had a steady stream of amazing presentations, roaming conversations and meals. I think collectively we all felt like we were part of something that was going to be historic.
It has become apparent that the project has great potential to develop in the years to come - as a laboratory for making and as a venue for site specific installations. I am so excited to share this with you in more detail when the time is right.
NEWSPAPER READING CLUB
CHRISTCHURCH POSTER PROJECT
Fiona Connor & Michala Paludin October 2015
For this iteration of Newspaper Reading Club, Fiona Connor and Michala Paludan invited eleven Christchurch locals to meet and read aloud from a newspaper or periodical of their choosing. The activity articulates the familiar process of skimming, commenting and editing that occurs when processing the news. Each reading has been transcribed, produced as a poster and pasted up in the location where the reading took place, returning these personalised news documents to public space.
Like never before, reading the news in Christchurch is critically important for understanding the politics and power relationships shaping the rebuild. With burgeoning online news forums (both official and grassroots platforms), and the decline of long-form investigative journalism in New Zealand, it is timely to consider the state of the news within our knowledge-based economy.
Established in 2011, Newspaper Reading Club is an ongoing collaborative project that takes form variously as performances, posters, radio broadcasts and publications. The project considers how people access the news and engage with current affairs.