Fiona Connor

Community Notice Board (Riverside)

Community Notice Board (Riverside) by Fiona Connor

Artwork Detail

Fiona Connor’s new work, Community Notice Boards, looks to the processes and physical forms of socially driven content generation, management and circulation. Her sculptures are quoted from existing bulletin boards found in various geographical locations (laundromats, libraries, cafes etc in Los Angeles, Basel, New York and New Zealand). Each board is photographed at the site then re-constructed in Connor’s Los Angeles studio. The changeable displays are reproduced by Connor for perpetuity; paper materials (such as advertisements, flyers, wanted or lost-and-found notices) are rendered in aluminum, where fittings (such as thumb-tacks, frames, latches) are produced using the same materials as if commercially manufactured, then arranged according to the originals.

Connor’s Community Notice Boards are cumulative compositions, complete with trompe l’oeil environmental effects; deterioration, accumulations, incidental marks, and signs of use. Connor builds up a patina of age through a variety of painterly and sculptural techniques. Her methodical process includes physical re-enactment –rough scribbles are gouged, pins pierce, sellotape accumulates or leaves residue where removed, patches are faded, water marks dribbled – to trace or map human activity upon these surfaces.

Connor’s concern here is with the social life of the object; how their surfaces make explicit the durational impact of multiple forces, most significantly human imprint and the effects of entropic decline. Connor’s works are physical registers of community activity; residues of a ‘messy democratic process’ where communities arrange content according to their own needs. The community serviced by each board is determined by place and proximity, as opposed to their digital counterparts (familiarized by skeuomorphic design) where content is generated through endlessly linked search terms with extensive social, cultural and geographical reach. In the face of advanced, more immediate, and immaterial means of communication, Connor’s Community Notice Boards both celebrate the “social networks of sites experienced IRL only”, and function as relics documenting their own obsolescence.

Title
Community Notice Board (Riverside)
Artist/creator
Fiona Connor
Production date
2015
Medium
custom freestanding bulletin board, paint, silkscreen and UV print, on aluminium plates, pins, staples, tape, concrete
Dimensions
2500 x 1700 x 300 mm
Credit line
Chartwell Collection, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, purchased 2016
Accession no
C2016/1/5.1-3
Copyright
Copying restrictions apply
Department
New Zealand Art
Display status
Not on display

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