Fiona Banner

In the work of British artist Fiona Banner (Merseyside, 1966), opposites play a significant role. This concerns the relationship between words and images, man and machines, but also between the physical world and the virtual one. Her work comprises sculpture, drawings, video installations, performances, posters and books. The exhibition is Banner’s first major presentation in the Netherlands. Banners work is characterized, as she once said, by a ‘dysfunctional relationship with the image.’ That began early on, when she came to a dead-end while painting images from Hollywood films such as Top Gun while at Goldsmiths College in London. She attempted to circumvent the problem by describing in words the images and movie narratives. These texts often took the form of ‘wordscapes’: films that she verbally transcribed, often making vast cinemascope drawings. On being nominated for the Turner Prize in 2002, her controversial contribution to the show consisted of a description of the porn film Arsewoman in Wonderland . In De Pont’s collection, the sculpture Work 1 , a life-sized scaffold tower made entirely of glass, embodies a fragile recollection of installing such oversized wall pieces. Banner’s relationship between the virtual and the physical is ever-present. She has often described words as her medium. She combined existing typefaces that she had used a lot in her work to create new typeface called Font, which anyone can download for free (www.fionabanner.com). Gruesome images from war movies and porn films appeal to the same primitive instincts. War arises when communication and words fail. Runway (aw17) exudes an atmosphere of imminent invasion, similar to the climate now gripping European politics, but there is also something playful about it. Connotations of words and artworks change. They are not carved in stone. ‘The work is un-static’, says Banner, ‘and that’s what really interests me about being an artist.’