Fiona Banner:  Exhibition in The Ikon Gallery, Birmingham

I visited this exhibition in The Ikon Gallery on 14th October 2015 with fellow students from years 1 and  2 

BA/Diploma of HE Fine Art. 

Banner's work in the exhibition includes a life-size tower scaffold in glass, (see image 1), a four metre high stack of encyclopedias,(see image 2), a 1920 baptismal font, a film of a Chinook helicopter and two mechanically operated wind socks in a kind of dialogue with each other.

Much of Banner's work references a play between language and object, the limitations of language and the struggle to communicate.
The font has a double meaning as a baptismal "font" and the "font" referred to in text!
The artist tells us that the  glass scaffold  is important because a tower scaffold is often used as a tool to erect works of art and is normally then taken away. Banner in this way makes it part of the work.

I enjoyed seeing this exhibition but my favourite piece of work was the wind socks in conversation because in one of my modules last year I made something with a very similar meaning. I got two people to choose a topic and have a conversation for about 3 minutes while making the sort of expressive hand gestures that people make when they are trying to convey something that they feel passionate about. I made a film showing just the two pairs of hands and without the sound the gestures looked very earnest and realistic. I think this was partly due to the fact that the two participants after the first few seconds genuinely completely forgot that they were being filmed!

Image 1                                                                                          Image 2