Fiona Curran: Static

9 Mar-29 Apr 2023

Overview

UH Arts + Culture are thrilled to present Static – a solo exhibition of new work by artist Fiona Curran

Moving between small-scale intimate works and large-scale installations, the exhibition explores the impacts of screen-based technologies on the decline of our sensory engagement with the world.

Series and repetition play a significant role in Curran’s practice through iterations of colour, material, scale and arrangement. The artist’s persistent use of a heightened colour palette and her assembled, layered surfaces both mimic and counter the fractured, illuminated, and seductive spaces of the screen. The viewer is immersed in a physical and material encounter with colour and space.

Curran describes her relationship to colour as:

“A space that I can enter and build from, sometimes literally in terms of layered or three-dimensional forms and structures, but also in terms of a broader relationship with the world as I experience it. Colour functions as a placeholder, a sensory record of an encounter. It is both an organisation and a condensation of feeling and a marker or trace, like an afterglow that continues to travel beyond the original moment. I like to think of colour in this way, not simply in visual terms, but as a physical presence that we move through continuously.” 

The exhibition’s title, Static, refers to the paradox of our contemporary moment; we can travel anywhere at any time via the screen without the need to move from the same spot. This results in a form of inactivity and a reduction of our full sensory experience, condensed by the optical smoothness of backlit transmission. The artist’s transformation of the gallery using colour and materials asks us to move beyond the notion of static as a state of inertness towards its alternative meanings as a form of interference and agitation.

Artists