New Viewings #6
Curated by Barbara Thumm
Fiona Banner’s work often plays with scale and dimensions – and this piece for New Viewings is a fitting work for her oeuvre. A full Chinook helicopter, shrink-wrapped and parked in the gallery. The image is absurd and yet reflects the reality: Aircraft grounded, borders closed, travel cancelled. There is only Nein Fahrt (no journey). Without the constraints of space or the logistics of bringing an entire, wrapped Chinook helicopter into the gallery space, the artist has embraced the potential of New Viewings with Nein Fahrt.
Fiona Banner
aka The Vanity Press
Fiona Banner, *1966 in Merseyside, England,
lives and works in London
Fiona Banner’s work centers on the problems and possibilities of language, both written and metaphorical. Her work encompasses text, sculpture, drawing and installation.
She became known for her early written transcriptions of Hollywood war films such as Top Gun and Apocalypse Now. From these ‘wordscapes’ to her use of found and transformed military aircraft, Banner juxtaposes the brutal and the sensual, performing a complete cycle of intimacy, attraction and alienation. Publishing, in the broadest sense, is at the heart of her practice. In 1997 she started working under the title of The Vanity Press. She has published books, objects and performances – often deploying a playful attitude and bringing pseudo grandeur to the act of publishing.
