The Australia Council for the Arts today announced Fiona Hall AO has been selected to represent Australia at the 56th International Art Exhibition, Venice Biennale 2015. Fiona will be the sole artist exhibiting at the newly constructed Australian Pavilion in the Giardini from May 2015. The exhibition will be curated by Melbourne-based curator, Linda Michael.
Fiona Hall first came to prominence as a photographer in the 1970s and during the 1980s she extended her creative practice to embrace a diverse range of art forms including sculpture, installation, garden design, and film. Transforming everyday materials and objects, Hall creates artworks which often address the relationship between nature and culture. Her practice includes major public commissions and projects that have increasingly engaged with themes of ecology, history and the effects of globalisation.
A major retrospective of her work was held at Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane and toured to the Art Gallery of South Australia (both 2005) and the survey exhibition Fiona Hall: Force Field at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia in partnership with City Gallery Wellington (2008) toured to Christchurch Art Gallery, New Zealand and Newcastle Art Gallery.
She has been included in many important group exhibitions and biennales, such as ‘dOCUMENTA 13 (2012), the Third Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art (2009), The Biennale of Sydney (2000 and 2010), and Prism: Contemporary Australian Art at the Bridgestone Museum, Tokyo (2006).
Fiona Hall was selected by a seven-member expert panel comprising: Simon Mordant AM, Australian Commissioner for the Venice Biennale 2015, Chair of the Selection Advisory Panel and Chair, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia; Danie Mellor, artist and Chair Australia Council Visual Arts Strategy Panel; Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Curator, Rome and New York; Max Delany, Senior Curator, Contemporary Art, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Rachel Kent, Chief Curator, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia; Suhanya Raffel, Director of Collections, Art Gallery of NSW; and Leigh Robb, Curator, Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts.
