Fiona Curran introduces her work for Art Across The CIty 2012
An Accident Looking For Somewhere To Happen presents a fractured and splintering wooden structure situated between two trees at the entrance to St.Mary’s church. The structure has been caught in a moment of explosion or collapse, it’s not clear which.
The heightened colours are borrowed from the world of the digital screen and advertising whose presence has become such a ubiquitous part of our everyday lives. Digital media enable access to local, regional, national and international sites simultaneously, in this process territorial boundaries dissolve as one location is caught up in another and distances collapse due to the compression of the near and the far. The speed of technology contributes to a sense of fragmentation as the instantaneous and dematerialized ‘real-time’ screen reality begins to replace the ‘real-space’ presence of objects, places and people.
These themes are explored through presenting an “accident” in the making, a precarious structure that engages the viewer through its form, colours and materials and through its unstable physicality.
The install over the last few days was relatively stress free. The only exception was the passing traffic and crazy range of responses / comments. These ran the full gamut of human emotions from the delight of some lovely OAPs to a someone who called me “an old hippy” (this did seem to be the most vitriolic and abusive term he could think of).
One man asked me if I was a Christian and began to inform me that the ancient pyramids and cave paintings were clearly built by aliens … I’m not sure what I was meant to deduce from this in relation to my own work – does it look like it has landed from outer space? One of the technicians mentioned that he thought they looked like crashed spaceships. This gives it a slightly Ballardian feel to it which I might go with…
