Notes on the Gallery as Military Hangar

Fiona Banner | ArtReview

Fiona Banner, Harrier and Jaguar, 2010, installation view for Tate Britain Duveens Commission. Photo: Sam Drake, Tate Photography. Courtesy the artist, Galerie Barbara Thumm, Frith Street Gallery, London and 1301PE, Los Angeles

By Nathalie Olah

A reencounter with the work of Fiona Banner prompts a reassessment of art institutions as political fields of hegemonic control

A few months ago, I was stood in the main hall of the Tate Britain in London talking to the artist Fiona Banner. It felt significant. My favourite use of that space had been an installation created by Banner over a decade earlier, in which she had hung a Sea Harrier from the ceiling and parked a Sepecat Jaguar on the gallery floor – two RAF planes that had been recently decommissioned. The installation was titled Harrier and Jaguar (2010) and at the time I remember reading that Banner, who is best known for her vast wordscapes comprising hand-typed or written sentiments, believed the objects represented the ‘opposite of language’.

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What I Buy and Why: Print Expert Judy Hecker Once Hunted Down a Work Written With Every Word of Dialogue From ‘Top Gun’

Fiona Banner and Rirkrit Tiravanija | ArtNet

Judy Hecker in front of Joan Mitchell, Trees IV (1992), a lithograph on two sheets. Photo: Argenis Apolinario. Courtesy of Judy Hecker.

By Lee Carter

You’d be hard-pressed to find a more dedicated and knowledgeable expert in the field of printmaking than Judy Hecker. Since 2016, she’s served as the director of Print Center New York, the city’s leading nonprofit exhibition space for the paper-based medium. As such, she brings her passion for printmaking to bear on the institution’s programming, broadening the public’s understanding of prints and multiples as a discrete art form that offers real experimentation.

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Venice Biennale 2022: Highlights From The Olympics Of The Art World

Fiona Banner | Forbes

Fiona Banner aka The Vanity Press, Pranayama Organ, 2021. High definition digital film 10:38 mins. Soft Parts: Wing, Flap, Fin, 2022 Bespoke beanbags. Dimensions variable. Installation view, Patronato Salesiano XIII, Venice, 2022. Photo: Enrico Fiorese

By Joanne Shurvell

“One of the only exhibitions where you’re actually among the locals, a basketball court within a converted church and a community playground, is the site of British artist Fiona Banner’s mesmerising film.Two full-scale inflatable military decoy aircrafts, a Typhoon and a Falcon slowly inflate on the beach, coming to life like two long-slumbering creatures. The setting of the film then shifts to a grassy precipice, where two figures, including the artist, are dressed as fighter planes and dance around each other. The church organ soundtrack is equally captivating.”

What to see at the Venice Biennale, from Sonia Boyce to the Sami Pavilion

Fiona Banner | Evening Standard

Fiona Banner aka The Vanity Press, Pranayama Organ, 2021. High definition digital film 10:38 mins. Soft Parts: Wing, Flap, Fin, 2022 Bespoke beanbags. Dimensions variable. Installation view, Patronato Salesiano XIII, Venice, 2022. Photo: Enrico Fiorese

By Nancy Durrant

“Simultaneously funny and oddly moving, this ten minute (yay!) film by the British artist Fiona Banner was made during lockdown on a shingle beach on the English South Coast - a bleak spot, liminal and soaked with ancient history. Two characters start out sprawled on the beach, slowly filling out to a soundtrack of human breath (and increasingly, deliberately overblown and ominous music) to reveal themselves as… two inflatable fighter planes, dancing together on this grey stretch, a much-needed emasculation of the tools of conflict. It’s ridiculous but also weirdly lovely (and short). The film is accompanied by a painting and a publication artwork, and the script for an impenetrable but entertaining Noh play written by Banner and her collaborator Tom McCarthy. It’s bonkers, and fun.”

The 59th Venice Biennale Review: Off-Site Projects

Fiona Banner | Frieze

Fiona Banner aka The Vanity Press, ‘Pranayama Organ’, 2021, installation view, Patronato Salesiano XIII, Venice, 2022.

BY SEAN BURNS IN CRITIC'S GUIDES | 22 APR 22

“Fiona Banner’s installation, ‘Pranayama Typhoon’, occupies a school gymnasium at Patronato Salesiano. As with all of the artist’s work, everything is cleverly interconnected for the viewer to decode. The ISBN number of the exhibition’s publication also appears on a small screen in the show, while the painting Capitalist, Capitalist, Capitalist (Ellipsis) (2022), containing rock-sized full-stops in a landscape, hangs on the gym’s basketball hoop. The central video, Pranayama Organ(2021), features two performers dressed as floppy fighter jets jostling on a beach: it’s a flaccid and futile distillation of failed, warmongering masculinity. Banner has been recycling this motif for over a decade: the Typhoon and Falcon jets are heavy signifiers of human ingenuity and destruction.”

Fiona Banner's 1.5 tonne sculpture protesting industrial fishing removed by UK government

Fiona Banner | The Art Newspaper | by Louisa Buck

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The government may be turning a blind eye to industrial fishing in the UK’s Marine Protected Areas (MPAs), but it is quick to respond when an unwanted sculpture is deposited outside one of its Department Offices. Within hours of Fiona Banner and Greenpeace dumping her 1.5tn granite sculpture Full Stop Klang (2020) on the doorstep of the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA) to protest against the government’s failure to stop illegal fishing in protected waters, the police had mustered the forces of Westminster Council to remove the work. 

Ironically it was at almost exactly the same time as Banner’s other two Full Stop works were being craned onto the Greenpeace boat Esperanza over at Tower Bridge. There they began their journey to the North Sea to form part of a protective barrier at Dogger Bank. Klang, however, was hoisted rather less auspiciously onto a Council truck to be transported up the A12 to a facility in Dartford. Here it resides until its fate is decided.

“We hope to get the sculpture back” Banner tells The Art Newspaper, adding “perhaps your readers can suggest where it should go next?” 

Greenpeace drops 1.5 - ton rock outside Defra HQ in fishing protest

Fiona Banner | The Guardian | by Mark Brown

Fiona Banner artwork is part of group’s direct action campaign against illegal North Sea fishing.

Security had been told to expect an artwork for the secretary of state at 9am. Perhaps they were not expecting it to be an enormous chunk of granite painted with squid ink and so heavy it will need a crane to remove.

The artist Fiona Banner and a team from Greenpeace deposited the 1.5-ton artwork outside the Westminster offices of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) on Monday.

Titled Klang, it supports Greenpeace’s direct action campaign against destructive and illegal fishing in the North Sea, which has involved dropping huge boulders in the Dogger Bank area to disrupt trawlers.

The artwork was sculpted from granite taken from the North Sea, which brought its own challenges. “I was astonished to be working with material which was just so dense and heavy,” she said.

The original intention was to carve something perfect but “once I started I realised it was completely resistant to human intervention. In the end that is nature telling us that it cannot, will not, continue to bend to our will.”

She made three sculptures using a powerful robot-controlled diamond cutter. Two of them, Peanuts and Orator, are heading by boat to the North Sea to be dropped by Greenpeace while Klang will remain outside Defra until authorities decide what to do with it.

Banner described the illegal bottom trawling of the North Sea as “like taking a bulldozer through an ancient forest”.

She sees the debate as not just about fishing in the North Sea. “It’s the future of humankind,” she said. “Here we are still in a pandemic, viscerally aware of our vulnerability and the vulnerability of nature. We know we all really need to act. Deploying the sculptures in this way is I guess a way of recognising we need to act beyond language.”

Greenpeace has said it will remove the boulders it is dropping in the sea – including the artworks – if the government takes credible action. What happens to the one in Westminster remains to be seen. “It will be quite hard to move. They will probably have to get a crane,” said Banner.

Banner, who once installed a Harrier jump jet in Tate Britain, has been sculpting full stops over two decades.

These works are materially different in that they have been painted with sustainably sourced squid ink. “We can’t put anything in the water that is toxic,” Banner said, “but they do smell a bit fishy. I was in the house the other day saying what’s that smell, what’s been going on and eventually it was traced back to me.”

A Defra spokesperson said: “We are putting sustainable fishing and protection of our seas at the heart of our future fishing strategy. We have already set up a ‘Blue Belt’ of protected waters nearly twice the size of England and the Fisheries Bill proposes new powers to better manage and control our Marine Protected Areas and English waters.

“The Common Fisheries Policy currently restricts our ability to implement tougher protections, but leaving the EU and taking back control of our waters as an independent coastal state means we can introduce stronger measures.”

A Review of WORD PLAY: Language As Medium at The Bonnier Gallery, Miami

Fiona Banner | Arteviste | By Robyn Tisman

Fiona Banner "Vs.," 2013, Double-sided lithograph

Fiona Banner "Vs.," 2013, Double-sided lithograph

Words have meaning. They symbolize ideas, complex concepts. Otherwise, they are merely collections of accumulated letters. Language, or lack thereof, informs the ways in which we navigate life, respond to stimuli, and interact with each other. 

WORD PLAY: Language As Medium, is a tightly curated exhibition on view at The Bonnier Gallery in Miami, Florida through July 20, 2019.  It features works by artists Fiona Banner, Benjamin Bellas, Mel Bochner, David Moreno, Kay Rosen, and Damon Zucconi, and slyly explores the philosophical underpinnings of language. The exhibition's catalogue essay provides the viewer with an overview of the role of language as conceptual art within the context of Postwar Art. 

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Fiona Banner aka The Vanity Press

Libby Leshgold Gallery

Vancouver, BC

27 June - 25 August 2019

The Libby Leshgold Gallery and READ Books are pleased to present Fiona Banner aka The Vanity Press.

Fiona Banner’s alias “The Vanity Press” stems from The Vanity Press, an imprint she established in 1997 with the publication of her artist book The Nam. Since then her work with publishing—straightforward as well as experimental and performative publishing—has become the mainstay of her practice, and is highly influential in the field of artists’ publishing.

This exhibition focuses on Banner’s Heart of Darkness, published in 2015 by The Vanity Press in collaboration with Four Corners Press. Banner’s remake of Joseph Conrad’s 1899 novella takes the form of a glossy luxury magazine. It began to take shape when she accepted an invitation by the Archive of Modern Conflict to conduct research in the archive. Noting a lack of contemporary images, Banner commissioned Magnum photographer Paolo Pellegrin, who is well known for covering global conflicts, including in the Democratic Republic of Congo where Conrad’s narrator Marlow sets his story, to turn his lens on the financial district of London. These images form the illustrations that accompany the text. Alongside the publication itself, the exhibition includes related work such as Breathing Bag (2016), a small kinetic sculpture made up of a plastic bag printed with a misquote from the novella that reads “Mistah Kurtz—He Not Dead” and the film Phantom (2015) in which a drone Phantom camera attempts to read Heart of Darkness as the down draft from its blades continually blows the magazine out of reach, eventually destroying it.

Further, the exhibition reflects on earlier works such as The Namand Trance (1997), including Banner’s verbal remake of Apocalypse Now, which in turn translates Francis Ford Coppola’s redeployment of Conrad’s narrative framework from Heart of Darkness. Other works on display include a selection of Full Stop Inflatables (2018) and Full Stop Bean Bags (2015), which take the form of massive 3D period marks from various fonts. Also featured are the artists’ books Scroll Down and Keep Scrolling (2015), Font Book (2016), and select artworks related to them. 

Fiona Banner aka The Vanity Press is an English artist, who lives and works in London. In 2002 she was shortlisted for the Turner Prize and in 2010, she was selected to create the 10th Duveen Hall commission at Tate Britain. Other recent exhibitions include: Runway AW17, De Pont Museum, Tilburg, Netherlands (2017), Buoys Boys, De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill, UK (2016), Scroll Down And Keep Scrolling, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, UK (2015) and Kunsthalle Nuremberg, Germany (2016), Wp Wp Wp, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield (2014).

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There’s a New Exhibition at the Walker Art Gallery That Both Art and Film Buffs Will Love

Fiona Banner aka The Vanity Press | The Guide Liverpool

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As seen on screen: art and cinema (31 May to 18 August 2019) features work by artists including Fiona Banner, Anthea Hamilton, Hardeep Pandhal and Sam Taylor-Johnson. The exhibition considers the influence of cinema on art across more than 20 artworks. The works represent a broad range of media, including screenprints, photography and film.

As seen on screen showcases Merseyside-born artist Fiona Banner’s The Desert; a five metre-wide screenprint which retells the epic 1962 film Lawrence of Arabia. The large scale of the artwork brings to mind the experience of gazing up at a cinema screen.

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Edge of Visibility (Group Exhibition): Fiona Banner and Philippe Parreno at IPCNY

Philippe Parreno, Vermillon Sands, 2004

Philippe Parreno, Vermillon Sands, 2004

Fiona Banner and Philippe Parreno

Edge of Visibility

IPCNY

508 W 26th St, New York, NY 10001

4 October - 19 December, 2018

1301PE is pleased to announce that Fiona Banner’s Top Gun (1966) and prints from Philippe Parreno’s 2005 book Fade to Black including A Penny for Your Thoughts, Website, 2006 (2013), A Wise Chinese Monk Shitting Light, Lamp Prototype For Alejandro Jodorowsky 2006 (2013), and Vermillon Sands, 2004 (2013), will be on view from October 4th to December 19th, 2018 as part of the exhibition Edge of Visibility at International Print Center New York.

Edge of Visibility, curated in conjunction with the September-October issue of the journal Art in Print by its editor-in-chief Susan Tallman, focuses on low-visibility strategies in printmaking. With over forty works spanning the 17th century to the present, the exhibition features laborious microengravings and subtle watermarks to evanescent images printed with UV-reactive inks.

“Viewing,” says guest curator Susan Tallman, “is at the heart of this exercise—what it means to see, physically, metaphysically, socially, and politically.” In Philippe Parreno’s Fade to Black (2005), visibility and its opposite take on intimations of mortality: in normal light, the prints appear to be solid rectangles of color; when the lights are switched off, however, phosphorescent images bloom, only to die off into darkness until they are recharged.

The often laborious, multi-step processes inherent to printmaking allow artists to maintain visual clarity before subverting this visibility in the final image. Examples include the highly-detailed, nearly imperceptible details of Chris Ofili’s multi-layered, opalescent Black Shunga (2008-15), or Walid Raad’s refined Views from Inner to Outer Compartments (2013).

The visual hurdle posed by low-visibility prints urges viewers to be more conscious of their sight upon entering the exhibition space. Rare historical works of virtuoustic micrography by Levi David van Gelder, Johann Michael Püchler, and William Pratt, use minuscule text to create images, escaping the conventional dichotomy of text and image. Matthew Kenyon’s Notepad (2007) and Fiona Banner’s Top Gun (1996) bring the tradition of micrography into the present.

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