For Strangely Familiar, curated by Ricky Subritzky, Fiona MacDonald with Fiona Hall contemplates home making and home security, possessions and dispossession. It enfolds us in intricate, insidious and repetitive patterns, bringing together old and new relationships between comforts and terrors. In its haunted domesticity we encounter after-shadows of imperialism and complicated folds of capitalism. MacDonald’s work springs from her experience living in the US from 2001 to 2003. Birds of prey from Audubon’s Birds of America are painted onto shopping bags. B-1B bombers crystallize on a drape, as other warplanes merge with falling leaves in a wallpapered domestic tableau. A desk lamp spins out of real-time with vision of Hurricane Katrina.
Text Ricky Subritzky
Strangely Familiar Exhibition Catalogue – https://www.fiona-macdonald.net//wp-content/uploads/2022/10/strangelyfamiliar_2005.pdf
American Raptors, 2002. Tempera on printed paper supermarket bags. 278 x 436cm. (50 pieces each 48 x 30 cm.
Tide Line, 2005. Bird skins courtesy Macleay Museum University of Sydney, tresle table. 90 x 1300 cm
Fall Wall, 2005. Screen-printed wall paper, 280 x 1400 cm. Light shade covered with wallpaper, 45 65 cm. Rocking chair upolstered with screen printed canvas, 110 x 70 120 cm
Photo credits: Paul Pavlov, Martin Van Der Wal, Greg Weight