Fiona Curran works with the poetics, the politics and the materialities of landscape space via the making of objects for exhibition and site-related commissions.
Curran presents landscapes that are broken down into views on the one hand and their physical/material presence on the other. Images and objects – painted, found, handmade and fabricated – sit alongside one another in differing modes of display that explore notions of the original and the copy, the natural and the artificial, the real and the imagined, and the role of technology in mediating between these positions. Using processes of editing, splicing, collage and assemblage, elements of the natural world are interspersed with representations of nature drawn from the fine and decorative arts. Works engage with unseen but sensed geographies through the use of pattern and repetition exploring notions of landscape space and landscape time, once measured through the impact of natural cycles and planetary shifts, now equally measured through digital time and the migratory flows of transnational capital. There is a strong tactile element at play that works to both mimic and counter the saturated spaces of screen technologies with their heightened colour and sleek, luminous surfaces. Objects and materials are stacked, draped, hung and folded often using the vertical and the horizontal planes in order to disrupt viewing positions and to question the different cultural values traditionally ascribed to art forms and materials across painting, sculpture and textiles.
Curran’s public commissions explore the histories of their site referencing historical and contemporary conditions and representations of power, the politics of land use and alternative ecologies.
“Curran’s work in its meditative boredoms and sickly fatigue is as much about forgetting we are already in the slow decline of the world reminding us that catastrophes may manifest suddenly, but the forces that cause them to snap build slowly in the sands of time beneath our feet.” Kit Hammonds, 2013.
“The woozy, febrile, tropical effect is helped by the fronds and palm trees, both real and replica… tune in to Curran’s atmosphere of artifice and exoticism, the languorous surfeit of surface.” Gabriel Coxhead, Modern Painters, 2014.
Fiona read Philosophy at the University of Manchester (1992-1995) followed by a further BA(Hons) and MA at Manchester School of Art (1996-2001). Fiona is a Senior Tutor at the Royal College of Art and completed her PhD at the Slade School of Fine Art in 2016. Thesis title: Towards a fractured topography of the present: art, ecology and the political economy of speed.
Solo exhibitions
2016 The grass seemed darker than ever, Kielder Forest, Northumberland
2013 Beach Fatigue, Carslaw St* Luke's, London.
2012 - Waiting for the Perfect View, Touchstones, Rochdale
2010 - Assembly, Chapter Gallery, Cardiff
2007 - Cornerhouse Projects, Cornerhouse , Manchester
2007 - The World Is Larger in Summer, MAC, Birmingham
Group exhibitions
2016 - Other, Royal College of Art, London
Slade MA/MFA/PhD Show, Slade School of Fine Art, London
2015 - No Matter New Matter, Ed. Varie, New York
Signal Failure (Squared), Safe House, London
Mostyn Open 19, Llandudno, Wales
Promise of Palm Trees, Breese Little, London
Finite Project Altered When Open, David Dale Gallery, Glasgow
2014 - Riff, Baltic39, Newcastle,
Situation, RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, Australia,
Interchange Junctions, Howick Place, London,
Detail, H Projects, Bangkok, Transition Gallery, London, Usher Gallery, Lincoln
2013 - Easy Does It, David Dale Gallery, Glasgow, Aid & Abet, Cambridge and Supercollider, Blackpool
Art Across the City, Swansea, Wales
Crocodiles With a Second Skin Thrash, Over + Out, Lincoln
2012 - Making Space, Slade School of Fine Art Research Centre, London
Untitled, Miami Beach, Miami, USA
The Yellow Wallpaper, Danson House, Bexleyheath Park, Kent
2011 - London Art Fair Projects, The Florence Trust, London Art Fair, London
Surplus To Requirements?, Slade School of Fine Art Research Centre, London
Translate/Transcribe, Central House of Artists, Moscow, Russia.
2010 - Guasch Coranty International Painting Prize, Centro Cultural Tecla Sala, Barcelona, Spain.
Paint, Beldam Gallery, Brunel University, London
Saatchi Northern Stars, The Blade Factory, A Foundation, Liverpool
Tatton Park Biennial, Tatton Park, Cheshire
The London Art Fair, Paul Stolper Gallery, London
2009 - Coller-Elective, Arena Gallery, Liverpool
Creekside open part 1, selected by Jenni Lomax), A.P.T Gallery, Deptford, London
Fringe MK Annual Painting Prize, Middleton Hall, Milton Keynes
Pairs, Paul Stolper, London
The London Art Fair, Paul Stolper Gallery, London,
Future 50, PSL, Project Space Leeds
2008 - Swap/Vaihto, Bureau and The Cable Factory, Salford and Helsinki
)Bracket This( III, Arena Gallery, Liverpool (Biennial Independents Programme)
2006 - Frenzy: L'art decoratif d'aujourd 'hui, The Metropole Galleries, Folkestone
New Trends In Painting Since 2000, City Gallery, Leicester
Pattern, Shipley Art Gallery, Gateshead
Residencies
2008 The Florence Trust, London
Public Commissions
2016 - Kielder Art & Architecture, Kielder Forest, Northumberland
2012 - Art Across the City, Locws International, Swansea
2009 - Vital Arts Commission, Occupational Health Centre, The Royal London Hospital, Whitechapel
Prizes and Awards,
2012 - The Jean Spencer and Malcolm Hughes Bursary, Slade School of Fine Art
2010 - RIBA MSA small projects award (for Tatton Park Biennial project)
2004 - Research and Development Award, The Arts Council England
Educational experience
2014 - present, Senior Tutor, Royal College of Art, London
2005 - 2014, Senior Lecturer Manchester School of Art, Manchester
