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

Fiona MacDonald, Artist. Australia.

Installation view of entrance to Strangely Familiar at UTS Gallery Sydney, 2005

Fiona MacDonald, Artist. Australia.

Crusade (B-1B), 2005, Digitrally Printed silk drape, 280 x1300 cm (21 panels each 280 x 139 cm)
Source image for ground: geophysical survey plot – magnetic density data

Fiona MacDonald, Artist. Australia.

American Raptors, 2002. Tempera on printed paper supermarket bags. 278 x 436cm. (50 pieces each 48 x 30 cm.

Fiona MacDonald, Artist. Australia.

Detail Crusade, 2005

Fiona MacDonald, Artist. Australia.

Tide Line, 2005. Bird skins courtesy Macleay Museum University of Sydney, tresle table. 90 x 1300 cm

Fiona MacDonald, Artist. Australia.

American Raptors, 2002. Tempera on printed paper, 48 x 30 cm

Fiona MacDonald, Artist. Australia.

Daedalum, 2005. Zoetrope with gouache drawings, 74 x 40 x 40 cm (installation view)

Fiona MacDonald, Artist. Australia.

Daedalum, 2005. Detail of Zoetrope interior with gouache drawings

Fiona MacDonald, Artist. Australia.

Daedalum, 2005. Detail of spinning Zoetrope interior with gouache drawings

Fiona MacDonald, Artist. Australia.

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

Fiona MacDonald, Artist. Australia.

Fall Wall (detail), 2005

Fiona MacDonald, Artist. Australia.

Daedalum, 2005. Zoetrope with gouache drawings, 74 x 40 x 40 cm (installation view)

Fiona MacDonald, Artist. Australia.

Log Cabin – JCI, 2005. Woven archival digital prints, 63 x 80 cm
Source Image Courtesy: Richard Woldendorp, Housing Development on Artificial James Cook Island, Sylvania Waters, New South Wales, 1996. Collection of the National Library of Australia

Photo credits: Paul Pavlov, Martin Van Der Wal, Greg Weight