FIRST EXPERIMENTS WITH TILTBRUSH

Age of Exploration

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      In this body of work, artist Fion Gunn draws together several themes which have underpinned her artistic practice. She contemplates the movement of peoples across our planet, reflecting not just her ancestors’ and her own experience but encompassing the lived experience of all migrants both contemporaneously and historically. The story of the silk roads, spice routes, flotillas of trade and ideas is painted, stitched, collaged and built into these artworks.
 
      Gunn revisits her childhood fascination with tales of exploration, of adventure and all too often, exploitation - Marco Polo, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, Dafoe’s Robinson Crusoe -  intrigued by the ethical/moral decisions made by the heroes/ villains and the complex investigations of human morality made by Joseph Conrad in Lord Jim and the Heart of Darkness.
 
      The circular ‘window’ motif which recurs in her work is both a porthole into seascapes and a representation of the cycle of life, a cycle of evolving eras. In each window a new world is discovered and an old world remembered.


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