Fiona MacDonald is known for her installations of bodies of work that draw on local cultural traditions, social and natural history. Neglected archives and personal collections, decorative arts and crafts such as weaving, collage, wallpaper and graphic arts are often source for her work. Her work takes the form of ‘conversations’ about undercurrents in social processes of inclusion and exclusion. http://www.fiona-macdonald.net/
Dawn Club 2021
Dawn Club 2021 is 8 paper stencil screen printed linen tea towels 70 x 50 cm edition of 10. Price: $500 (Postage $15.90 Prepaid parcel post with tracking)
Dawn Club installation view Henry Lawson Centre Gulgong NSW
The Dawn Club, an exhibition by Fiona MacDonald, will open at the Henry Lawson Centre Gulgong on the 1st December 2021 at 11am. to 31st January 2022.
‘Lawson was a writer of men,’ writes Catriona Moore of Sydney University, ‘specifically bushmen. The city was a place to be avoided for its wives and its wowsers: those who tamed men and denied their pleasures. Yet up close, Lawson’s stories and poems are more nuanced than the simple Bulletin stereotype. Lawson’s predilection for authentic representation tapped into an emerging, distinctively modern Australian womanhood. Lawson’s early admiration is embodied in stories like ‘The Drover’s Wife’ (1892) – depicting a tough and reflective woman who seems to be embedded in the very land itself, and whose resourcefulness was in synch with the progressive ferment of the times.’
Fiona MacDonald’s research into the archives of the Henry Lawson Centre showed her the influence many women had had on the life and career of Henry. A chance find of an obscure theatre playbill became the inspiration for the works in the exhibition. Dozens of hand printed tea-towels depicting portraits of the women who impacted Henry (and then so much more) will hang across the Henry Lawson Centre’s hall.
Catriona Moore again writes that ‘Fiona MacDonald rinses conventional literary wisdom to restore a female perspective that is usually overlooked. . . . They evoke the domestic realm, but each woman depicted exasperatedly tells us that she is not simply one of Lawson’s women, but a person in own her own right’
Dawn Club is an initiative of Orana Arts’ HARd program that connects artists and museums to tell stories to the world.
Dawn Club installation view Henry Lawson Centre Gulgong NSW
Dawn Club installation view Henry Lawson Centre Gulgong NSW
Dawn Club installation view Henry Lawson Centre Gulgong NSW
Dawn Club installation view Henry Lawson Centre Gulgong NSW
Dawn Club installation view Henry Lawson Centre Gulgong NSW
Fiona MacDonald, Obsolete no 1, 2017. Inkjet print from digital image on archival paper, 59.4 x 42cm. Edition of 3. Source images Kandos Museum collection object photographs by Mike Oakey.
Fiona MacDonald, Obsolete no 2, 2017. Inkjet print from digital image on archival paper, 59.4 x 42cm. Edition of 3. Source images Kandos Museum collection object photographs by Mike Oakey.
Fiona MacDonald, Obsolete no 3, 2017 (work-in-progress). Inkjet print from digital image on archival paper, 59.4 x 42cm. Edition of 3. Source images Kandos Museum collection object photographs by Mike Oakey.
Fiona MacDonald, Obsolete no 4, 2017. Inkjet print from digital image on archival paper, 59.4 x 42cm. Edition of 3. Source images Kandos Museum collection object photographs by Mike Oakey.
Fiona MacDonald, Obsolete no 5, 2017. Inkjet print from digital image on archival paper, 59.4 x 42cm. Edition of 3. Source images Kandos Museum collection object photographs by Mike Oakey.
Fiona MacDonald, Obsolete no 6, 2017. Inkjet print from digital image on archival paper, 59.4 x 42cm. Edition of 3. Source images Kandos Museum collection object photographs by Mike Oakey.
Fiona MacDonald, Obsolete no 7, 2017. Inkjet print from digital image on archival paper, 59.4 x 42cm. Edition of 3. Source images Kandos Museum collection object photographs by Mike Oakey.
Fiona MacDonald, Obsolete no 8, 2017 (work-in-progress). Inkjet print from digital image on archival paper, 59.4 x 42cm. Edition of 3. Source images Kandos Museum collection object photographs by Mike Oakey.
Fiona MacDonald, Obsolete no 9, 2017. Inkjet print from digital image on archival paper, 59.4 x 42cm. Edition of 3. Source images Kandos Museum collection object photographs by Mike Oakey.
Fiona MacDonald, Obsolete no 10 2017. Inkjet print from digital image on archival paper, 59.4 x 42cm. Edition of 3. Source images Kandos Museum collection object photographs by Mike Oakey.
Fiona MacDonald, Obsolete no 11, 2017 (work-in-progress). Inkjet print from digital image on archival paper, 59.4 x 42cm. Edition of 3. Source images Kandos Museum collection object photographs by Mike Oakey.
Fiona MacDonald, Green Bans, Victoria St, 2011.
$450 unframed.
Source images: Eviction of 115 Victoria St, 1974 photo in Little Book of Green Bans, 1974; Tribune Negative Archive, Mitchell Library State Library NSW; Mick Fowler¹s Jazz Funeral in Seaman’s Journal, 1979. Big Fag Press, 76.5 x 94 cm. Edition of 25.
Fiona MacDonald, 1. Green Bans, Woolloomooloo: Tom Uren, John Mulvenna, Joe Owens, Bob Pringle, Gerry Leonard, Mick Fowler, Nellie Leonard, 1975; Wall painting, Woolloomooloo, 1974, 2011. $350 unframed.
Source images: found photo now in Jack Mundey archive in Trades Hall Association Collection and Wall Painting, 19 Harmer St., Woolloomooloo, after Marion Marrison, photograph 1974.
Big Fag Press. Archival paper, 76.5 x 77 cm. Edition of 25.