Fiona Jack - New Zealand

2008 South / RMIT Artist in Residence, Melbourne
June to August 2008

1. •Exhibition: Taxi
   Opening night:  Thursday 21 August 2008 from 5 to 7pm.
   Floor Talk: Friday 22 August 2008, 12 to 1pm.
   Exhibition runs until 5 September 2008 (Monday to Friday 9.30am to 5.00pm)
   RMIT Project Space /Spare Room: RMIT Building 94.2, 23 - 27 Cardigan Street, Carlton
   Further Info, visit: RMIT School of Art website
   

2. •Catalogue (click to download PDF).  Essay by Nicola Harvey.
   

   

   
   

3. •Biography:  Fiona Jack
   Fiona Jack works across many media to investigate the conceptual, geographical and political definitions of shared space - a space that includes linguistic, physical, social and historical contexts.  By calling attention to things as diverse as a list of the nationalities excluded from a dictionary, to the barriers constructed along borders around the world since 9/11 in the name of ‘National Security’, Jack questions the terms and structures that shape our lives. In a recent collaborative project with the Tangata Whenua of Tamaki - Ngati Whatua (the local Maori of Auckland) a reconstructed palisade fence along Auckland’s waterfront recalls the fence that was built in 1943 to protect the Pa (Maori village) from encroaching urbanization and persecution. The Pa was eventually burnt to the ground and its residents evicted – remaining landless for almost 40 years.
   
   In a recent billboard project Jack installed street level billboards in London that housed over ten thousand drawings of borders in envelopes accompanied by the slogan ‘Please Take One’. In ‘75 Cuban revolutions’ seventy-five postcards honoring people who house illegal libraries in their homes were sent to a gallery in Cuba that exhibited only those that made it through the postal system.  Jack has also installed several site specific painting installations internationally that locate their process and critique within Situationist thinking, and are based on local research, collaboration and intervention to generate their form.  Fiona graduated with an MFA from CalArts in Los Angeles in 2005 and has since exhibited in London, Chile, Australia, USA and New Zealand. She is a Lecturer at the University of Auckland and lives in New Zealand.