
1301PE is pleased to present a one-person exhibition by 2002 Turner Prize nominee, Fiona Banner. Banner takes inspiration from popular culture (cinema, language, pornography). She turns the big screen into wordscape, words into mere punctuation, and punctuation into formal sculpture.
In her exhibition at 1301PE, Fiona Banner utilizes imagery of the Chinook helicopter, playing with the viewer’s memory to recollect the menacing context in which we know this strange bird, universally inspiring visions of war that many of us have only seen in the movies. Her punctuation landscapes point to the frustration that is the powerlessness of language to articulate meaning. Her full stops are blown up periods whose intrinsic meaning signifies the end before the beginning. Yet, Banner’s works do not convey the feeling of hopelessness, but rather reveal an underlying emphasis on the basics, which are so often ignored and necessary to bring together and give meaning to the whole.
Fiona Banner was born in 1966. She lives and works in London.
One-person museum exhibitions and projects include Neuer Aachener Kunstverein, Aachen and Dundee Contemporary Arts, Dundee in 2002; Emily Carr Institute, Vancouver in 2000; Statements, Basel Art Fair and _ASTERISK, _Gesellschaft für Aktuelle Kunst, Bremen in 1999; Art Now Room, Tate Gallery, London in 1998; _The Nam - 1000 page all text flick book, _London in 1997; Pushing Back The Edge Of The Envelope, City Racing, London in 1994.
Selected group exhibitions include Turner Prize exhibition, Tate Britain and Remix: Contemporary Art and Pop, Tate Liverpool in 2002; American Tableaux, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN, Total Object, Complete with Missing Parts, Tramway 2, Glasgow (curated by Andrew Renton), _Dévole_r, Institut d’art contemporain, Villeurbanne, France, Berlin Biennale, Berlin, (curated by Saskia Bos), Rooseum, Malmo, Sweden; CAC, Vilnius, Lithuania, Superman in Bed, Contemporary Art and Photography – The Collection Gaby and Wilhelm Schürmann, Museum am Ostwald, Dortmund and City Racing, ICA, London in 2001; Customized:Hot Rods, Low Riders and American Car Culture, ICA Boston, Eine Munition unter Anderen, Frankfurter Kunstverein and All You Need is Love, Laznia Center of Contemporary Art, Gdansk, Poland in 2000; 100 Drawings, PS1 New York, _Babel, _Ikon Gallery, Brimingham, _Afterall launch, _Wallace Collection, London and Cinema Cinema, Van Abbe Museum, Eindhoven in 1999; Slipstream, Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow, 5th Avenue Project at Saks, New York, _Narrative Urge, _Uppsala Konstmuseum, Sweden, and _Point Break, Project for Tate Magazine (Commissioned by Tate Gallery, Liverpool) in 1998; Die Arbeit des Zeichnens**__Gesellschaft für Aktuelle Kunst, Bremen, Germany, 20/20 Kingsgate Gallery, London (accompanied by a catalogue), _Need for Speed, _Grazer Kunstverein, _**Graz, Austria, _An Exhibition of Art from Britain, _Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Australia, and _Urban Legends - London, _Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, Germany in 1997; _Backpacker, _The Chiang Mai Social Installation, 4th Festival of Art and Culture, Chiang Mai, Thailand, _into the void, _Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, and _General Release: Young British Artists, _Scuola di St. Pasquale,Venice Biennale, Venice in 1995; _Art Unlimited, _Arts Council Collection, UK Tour, _Institute of Cultural Anxiety, _ICA, London in 1994.



Fiona Banner (b. 1966, Liverpool, UK) is an English artist, who was shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 2002. Much of Banner’s artistic practice illuminates the limitations and possibilities of language and its cultural parameters, investigating the slippage between object, image and text. Her multi-disciplinary practice encompasses drawing, film, sculpture, installation, as well as publishing and performance. Upon graduating from Goldsmiths College of Art in London in 1993, Banner came to prominence in the 1990s with her ‘wordscapes’, written transcriptions of iconic Hollywood war films retold frame-by-frame in the artist’s own stream-of-consciousness writing. The 1,000 page book The NAM (1997), for example, describes the plots of six Vietnam films in their entirety. As Banner has stated, “…a lot of my earlier work is about how things are expressed or can become manifest through words – how you can visualise passages of time through language.” Banner has long-standing fascination with the emblem of fighter aircraft and their role within culture, which has resulted, amongst others, in her monumental Harrier & Jaguar installation at the Tate Britain in 2010. Banner’s longstanding interest in Hollywood films, conflict and language has more recently led to set of interrelated bodies of work that investigate Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and its various iterations. Banner lives and works in London, where she runs her imprint The Vanity Press. Banner is represented in major collections including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Philadelphia Museum; Walker Art Gallery, Minneapolis. Her work has been the subject of solo exhibitions and commissions at Tate Britain, London; Whitechapel Gallery, London; The Power Plant, Toronto; Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield; IKON, Birmingham and the DuPont, Tilburg, Netherlands.

Founded by Brian Butler in 1992, 1301PE is a contemporary art gallery exhibiting significant Los Angeles based artists as well as internationally established and acclaimed artists. The gallery is known for its exhibition of significant work across mediums. Founded on the principle of promoting Los Angeles artists worldwide, the gallery has been located at its current location in Miracle Mile, Los Angeles since 1998.

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