FION GUNN - ARTIST
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June 17th, 2020

6/17/2020

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This is a bit of a late posting but only because I've been so busy!!! Between 4 - 18 May I held a micro exhibition in my front garden showing one artwork every day (until the last day when I showed 3). As a result of all the positive responses I initiated a neighborhood arts with other artists I met during my micro show.
Youtube link- One Day at  a Time -micro exhibition  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=030X2yQI--k

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BLACK LIVES MATTER - THIS IS A BARE MINIMUM!

6/5/2020

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We live in a time where we can change things if we act and if we commit. How much longer do people of colour have to put up with being treated as lesser? treated as alien? When I was a young person and came to London to live for the first time in 1981, my Irish accent marked me out as different - I was often treated with extreme rudeness, outrageous condescension and racism, but hey - I am white and well educated! I got angry, confrontational and called it out. Back then we Irish were the 'Muslims' of UK social landscape, politically dangerous bombers and troublemakers.
I was working as a live-in cleaner at The Kingsley Hotel, Bloomsbury when the Brixton riots were ignited. Many of the chamber maids and kitchen staff lived in Brixton and  as there were no trains, no buses, they had to walk along the underground train tracks to get to work. One assistant chef was sacked because he couldn't walk fast enough and arrived at work late. The management prioritised the interests of reception staff (all white) and I and my Irish friend with whom I shared a room escaped difficulty because we were a. on site and b. the head of housekeeping was also Irish. It was very obvious that management regarded their black staff as expendable and replaceable. We did protest but were not exactly in a position of power...... I wish I could say that this attitude is gone - but it's not!. My children went to very diverse state schools in Lambeth- thank goodness! - they grew up knowing that their peers black, white, pink, brown or yellow are people just like them, no better and no worse. As artists we are always a bit on the fringe of society and it is our duty to call out racism, sexism and any other divisive isms in a way that engages, challenges and embraces our diverse communities. I must stop now or I'll start talking about revolution....
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Displaced # 8 an artwork for this time.....

4/23/2020

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I completed this work for an exhibition in Paris which was of course, cancelled because of the Covid19 crisis. I had begun making it just before Christmas and finished it in early March. It is a reflection on where we find ourselves as human beings living in a climate change emergency. Even though I knew from friends how Covid19 was affecting life in China I had not taken on board that it would hit Europe in the same way, largely because of remembering SARS and subsequent viruses. I was a fool - like so many - I should have been expecting the worst. In this artwork where a rising sea teams with life, where cities lie drowned in their depths, my imagination was more in touch with the realities we face than my conscious self.

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Ports and Portholes into other worlds

2/25/2020

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'Venice' central panel of five for 'Port' an artwork which explores  the intertwined narrative of East/West trade and exchange from historical, philosophical and personal perspectives. 
​102 x102cm canvas, acrylic, collage, gold leaf
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'YOUNG GUNN'  THE ONLINE CATALOGUE

10/26/2019

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The online catalogue for my upcoming exhibition features the curatorial essay written by Emily de Wolfe Pettit. 
young_gunn_online_catalogue_28_oct.pdf
File Size: 6689 kb
File Type: pdf
Download File

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Odyssey: Explorations - sketches for the artwork

7/2/2019

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I've been spending a lot of time on my new Oculus Quest using Tiltbrush to create 'sketches' for the artwork I'll present at Tate Exchange Liverpool. It's massively interesting - and often frustrating and I am really enjoying the process. My assistant Terri Broughton and I have been troubleshooting and sharing the headset (it gives you quite a headache if you wear it for more than an hour and a half.... So I'll start posting these sketches as they're completed. The idea of using all kinds of vessels, not just maritime ones is a reminder that human beings use many means of travelling and maybe in the future we will need to become migrants in space. On a day when one unfortunate would be migrant fell out of a plane and landed in garden in Clapham, it feels appropriate to consider that with changing circumstances we might all be driven to being stowaways....
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July 02nd, 2019

7/2/2019

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In his essay about the exhibition ‘Odyssey: The Return’ (Beijing 2019) the curator Huang Du writes 
 

  “Fion Gunn's works here are inspired by Joyce’s Ulysses and in fact, from childhood she has had a keen interest in reading literary classics from which she absorbed much about the human condition.

In these classical stories of exploration and adventure, the heroes and villains are recognisable as ethically and morally ambiguous human beings who have complex psychologies, who are driven by selfishness or integrity and so on. She makes particular reference to Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’ in her three-dimensional, stream of consciousness "pictures", where the simultaneous encounter of thoughts, emotions and memories reflect the literary cross-narration.

She is constantly searching for unexpected connections and by incorporating these in her artworks, she creates a very different kind of literary ‘collage’, one which leads her to remember old worlds and discover new ones simultaneously. In almost every painting, Fion Gunn’s narrative is intrinsically linked to a chapter of Joyce’s Ulysses, however the artist is not merely recreating or illustrating literature, for this is a subjective depiction of the real world inhabited by people and things.

Running through her personal concerns about family, reality, mythology, Chinese culture, gender and immigration, she has brought to bear her visual ideas and imagination, so in ‘Dublin Bay Triptych’ (2018) which refers to ‘Ulysses’ Chapter 13 (Nausicaa), she depicts the frequent trade between Dublin and Liverpool through a church like window. At the same time, the painting also makes reference to an episode in ‘Ulysses’ where Joyce explores the male gaze, sexuality and love from both male and female perspectives.


Meanwhile, in The Dream of Zheng He (in five parts, 2017), Fion Gunn uses a ‘continuous image’ technique to depict the stories of Zheng He's personal life: family separation and capture by the army in Ming Dynasty China. It vividly evokes Zheng He’s extraordinary courage and the arduous adventures he experienced in the Western Ocean.

Although Zheng He’s expedition to the West did not end as brutally or tragically as the sinking of the “Titanic”, the artist hints at the dark side of today’s complex and uncertain reality, one where the world is in crisis and at risk.

Contradictions and conflicts between globalization and counter-globalization, migration of immigrants and conservative populism, the divide between the North and the South, between the center and the periphery are highlighted throughout her work.

Contradictions and conflicts between globalization and counter-globalization, migration of immigrants and conservative populism, the divide between the North and the South, between the center and the periphery are highlighted throughout her work. Similar concerns are addressed in paintings such as Age of Exploration no.5 (2017) and The Immigrants no.1 and no.2 (2017) which metaphorize or infer that we are in a state of uncertainty.
 
On the other hand, Fion Gunn's two paintings, ‘Agamemnon Waiting’ and ‘Eurydice and the City of the Dead’, which refer to ‘Ulysses’, Chapter 8, (Lestrygonians) and Chapter 18 (Penelope) respectively, encompass fantastical narratives. From these collaged paintings, frightened people and broken bronze statues, gaze. The dramatic treatment of this gaze highlights the contradictions within the central figures in these works, symbolizing their loyalty and love through the juxtaposition of other figures, flowers, wedding dresses, architectural vaults or Greek columns​

The narratives of these two works play with the notion of "absurdity" and reflect on the contradictory psychological characteristics of human nature - betrayal, guilt, disgust, death, love and so on. It is in this sense that she uses a unique method of expression to recombine unrelated or incongruous images. For instance, almost all these images derived from different times and places, are grouped together on the same spatial plane, creating and enhancing the sense of magical reality. The synchronised dialogue and narrative of different images undoubtedly echoes the stream of consciousness evidenced in ‘Ulysses’.

The artist uses colour expressively and in so doing highlights and celebrates the body’s visceral instincts and perceptions: the relationship between light and darkness, consciousness and physicalism, emotion and energy. Her paintings recreate a dreamlike visual language, using natural landscapes and intimate everyday scenes. Through the assemblage of incongruous fragmented images, her work evokes the fragility of the human spirit and the unpredictability of the world.”

黄 笃 Huang Du is an independent curator based in Beijing. He has published numerous critical articles and essays on contemporary art for magazines and catalogues internationally, He was Art Advisor to the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale 2012 with Hans Ulrich Obrist, curator for the Chinese pavilion of the 26th Sao Paulo Biennale, Sao Paulo, 2004 and assistant curator for Chinese Pavilion of the 50th Venice Biennale, 2003. 



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Fishing Without My Father - the journey.....

2/20/2019

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​Only when I had finished this work did I fully understand what I wanted to express. My father took me fishing regularly as a child and these were the times when our relationship was least complicated and he was kinder to me. We would spend hours on the rocks looking at the sea and trying to spot  when a school of fish would break the  water’s surface. He is now in a state of advanced dementia, he is gone from this world and from me…. From a wider perspective, I am contemplating the complex journey of a human life as I sit in my inland sea in a state of flux.
The process of making this artwork, which incorporates 3D scanning & printing and internal lighting, was a crucial to  exploring meaning in a  subliminal and  profound way.
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Age of Exploration: Spice - a continuing saga!

3/10/2018

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https://www.youtube.com/edit?o=U&video_id=rn-cqOih4ng
I started work on Age of Exploration: Spice about 6 years ago when I found this wooden case dumped on a nearby street. Initially I laid out a trail of cloves on the floor of the case and then ground to a creative halt. Last November I opened the case again with  a clear idea of what I wanted to do with  it, complicated.... It kept me awake nights but the complexity helped me to get through a hard time and it has been one of the most enjoyable pieces I have  ever made. My son filmed it for me - it's always difficult to capture a 3D piece in a 2D photo, what the film doesn't capture is the fragrance of the spice landscape, it is in fact an olfactory experience as well as a narrative of exploration. What started me thinking about making this piece in the first  place was a visit to the Musée Nationale de la Marine in Paris about 12 years ago; I saw a wonderful model ship made entirely out of cloves and of course, this was made by a sailor who had nothing else to occupy him during the many months at sea. He made the work about what was close to hand, a hold full of cloves and the ship he was sailing in and he created something magical. 
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Gripped by Cities  - new work for Shanghai exhibition

3/10/2018

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For the  last couple of months, apart from from the  3D work I have been working on the paintings/collages also. These 2 artworks 'The Dreams of City Dwellers' #2 (above) and 'A Child's View of Babel' (below) both reflect my ongoing fascination with cities, their complex histories and the movement of peoples to and from them. These works will be featured in 'On Paper' curated  by Chang Feng in Shanghai this April.

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    Fion Gunn is a London based visual artist with an international multi-media practice.

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