FIONA CONNOR

Connor has often focused on the institutional spaceof the gallery or museum, engaging with the overlooked framework uponwhich art resides. In 2009 she replicated the façade of Michael Lett’sgallery inside the gallery space, not once but fourteen times, literallyputting the gallery on display. For What you bring with you to work (2010),she cut holes in the museum walls, placed window frames over the holes,and let us peer behind the scenes. These were not generic windows,however, but facsimiles of the bedroom windows of individual galleryattendants. More than simply institutional critique, this work offeredan intimate look into the lives of others.

Her contribution to Made in L.A. 2012,the first Los Angeles biennial, was a replica of the first few steps ofthe Hammer Museum’s marble staircase, placed across the lobby by thefront windows. Titled Lobbies on Wilshire, her precise reproduction functioned as both mimetic sculpture and interactive environment.“Iam interested in laying one scripted space over another to explore theway art is approached and our boundaries of engagement, abandonment andempathy.” – Fiona Connor

For Bare Use, Connor looks tothe restorative oasis of the spa, fastidiously re-fabricating thetypical objects that characterize this environment – water fountain,towel case, signs. She introduces these specific items to the gallery,investigating what happens when the elements of one specialized spacecollide with another. Her sculptures operate on both aesthetic andperformative levels: they are works of art based on functional objects,and functional objects themselves, dislocated from their origins.

FionaConnor was born in Auckland, New Zealand and lives and works in LosAngeles. She was included in the first Los Angeles biennial, Made in L.A. 2012 at the Hammer Museum, and her 2010 solo show Murals and Print was the inaugural exhibition at Various Small Fires, Los Angeles, CA. Recent group exhibitions include Gap, Mark, Sever and Return, Human Resources, Los Angeles, CA; Concrete Situations, Pact, Essen, Germany; Experimental Impulse, REDCAT, Los Angeles, CA; You Are Here, Artspace, Auckland, New Zealand; and Octopus 8,Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne, Australia. In 2010 she was a finalistfor New Zealand’s most prestigious contemporary art award, the WaltersPrize.