Artists > 2010: Framing Identity > Fiona Curran

Work

Relocating and reassembling the everyday is part and parcel of the Biennial in 2010. Fiona Curran’s This time next year things are going to be different presents visitors with a folly in the Arboretum. An abstracted and collapsing miniaturised house of vivid colours hangs precariously from a tree. Access is denied and there is the feeling that the work, like Dorothy’s home, has made an airborne journey and has prematurely lodged itself at Tatton like a new Oz. Produced in association with A-Cube Architects and input from Garry Charnock representing the sustainable village of Ashton Hayes.

Biography

Fiona Curran is an artist based in London and Manchester. She studied Philosophy at the University of Manchester before completing a BA and MA at the Manchester School of Art where she is now a Senior Lecturer. She adopts an interdisciplinary approach in her practice combining painting, collage and installation to explore our relationship to landscape and the ‘natural’ through their representation in traditional forms of the decorative. Quoting art historical moments from the Baroque, 18th Century Chinoiserie, 19th Century Scenic Wallpapers and early Modernism, her works engage with a recurring utopian impulse, formal idealism and sense of escapism that re-registers in a palette borrowed from the computer screen and advertising.

Recent group exhibitions include Romance Derived: Fringe MK Painting Prize, 2009; Pairs, Paul Stolper Gallery, 2009; Future 50, Project Space Leeds, 2008; Swap/Vaihto, Bureau, Manchester and The Cable Factory, Helsinki, 2008; alongside solo shows at Cornerhouse Projects; 2007 and MAC, Birmingham, 2007. In 2009, she completed a site-specific commission for Vital Arts at The Royal London Hospital and a one-year residency at The Florence Trust, London.

www.fionacurran.co.uk