fiona roberts forms sculptural body furnishings for intimate vestiges

fiona roberts forms sculptural body furnishings for intimate vestiges
all images courtesy of fiona roberts

intimate vestiges
kickarts contemporary arts, cairns
now through june 13th, 2015

for the exhibition ‘intimate vestiges’ at kickarts contemporary arts, australia, artist fiona roberts explores the personal and individual nature of the home through a variety of body textures incorporated into traditional household furnishings. abstracted through repetition, pattern and traditional ornamentation, these pieces installed throughout the bedroom installation blur the boundaries between the home and the body, making it difficult to determine where the house ends and where the person begins.

‘the chair’, 2014-15
hair, ceramic

a hair chair with ceramic mouths, a shag pile rug made up of thousands of ceramic fingers and a dark window, concealed by curtains that look back at the visitor are installed throughout the faux-bedroom. these conventional items of the house that generally go unnoticed, become here, the focus of the viewer’s attention, drawing them in to a personal narrative about everyday routines, memories, accidents, habits, and fear.

‘the rug’, 2014-15
ceramic

‘insides are often inaccessible places’, writes adelaide-based artist sera waters in response to the exhibition. ‘both bodies and homes have insides that are housed within a protective outside; layers that restrict interlopers and obscure vision. unlike the familiarity of home and despite our bodies being our own, we are strangers to our insides; we can never scrutinise (nor necessarily want to) the visual details of our physiological workings, nor really know its unique complexity. a most familiar place, and a ripe site for art practice since the women’s movement, is the home, which is crammed full of objects, furniture, soft furnishings and wall hangings with which we have intimate bodily connections. the art work of fiona roberts collides these intimate yet unhomely realms as a way to look inside from the outside – a form of intimate surveillance.’

detail of ‘the rug’