Maureen Paley opens its first exhibition at the gallery by New Zealand artist Fiona Connor

LONDON.- Maureen Paley is presenting the first exhibition at the gallery by New Zealand artist Fiona Connor who is based in Los Angeles.

Fiona Connor’s work draws attention to specific objects and architectural spaces and seeks to investigate and interact with social arenas such as public parks, night clubs or exhibition venues. By utilising processes of reproduction and simulation, Connor’s sculptural language challenges how we interpret often overlooked peripheral forms and spatial details within these sites of exchange and communication. Presented in this exhibition are examples of work from recent projects that are brought together for the first time, directing the viewer’s attention between various sites, materials, and states of being, while also engaging with the specific location of the gallery. This is just one of several art events in Christchurch

Included are recreated bulletin boards that were found along State Route 27 or Topanga Canyon Blvd that include meticulously replicated faded flyers and ephemera that have been re-made using UV-printing and screen-printing onto aluminium sheets. Frozen in the moment they are transformed, the notice boards present micro-histories of communities and personal threads of connectivity that also document the obsolescence of the bulletin board as a current place of social interaction due to a great dependence on social media. Her resin cast monochromes are all taken from surfaces that have been attached to buildings for a long time to serve a purpose (a boarded-up window of a bar and two bulletin boards that stood empty). Their presence suggests the anachronistic echoes of silenced interactions that once played out and are now abandoned spaces. Situated directly on the floor or mounted as they would be encountered first hand, Connor has also cast in bronze various functional items, personal belongings, and pieces of furniture that operate as trigger signs of habitation – sourced from her studio, home and from her movement in the city. This slippage in physical and experiential time is also alluded to through her delicate reprinting of pages from past issues of the LA Times that are rendered on coated tin foil.

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Fiona Connor (b. 1981, Auckland, New Zealand) currently lives and works in Los Angeles, California. She received a Bachelor Degree from the University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand and a Masters of Fine Arts from California Institute for the Arts, Santa Clarita, California.

Recent solo exhibitions include: My muse is my memory, an archive of Closed Down Clubs, Château Shatto, Los Angeles, California, USA (2022); Closed for installation, Fiona Connor, SculptureCenter, #4, SculptureCenter, New York, Fiona Connor, #8, Closed for Installation, Sequence of Events, Secession, Vienna (2019); Direct Address, 1301PE, Los Angeles, USA (2018); Closed Down Clubs, MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Los Angeles (2018); Object Classrooms, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth (2018, 2008, 2004); Wallworks, Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne (2014) and A section of Something Transparent (please go round the back) II, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, Auckland (2010).

Selected group exhibitions include: Walls to Live Beside, Rooms to Own: The Chartwell Show, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, Auckland (2022); Daily Nightshift, Kunsthal Extra City, Antwerp (2020); Celebration of Our Enemies, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, Haunt, Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, Berman Board, Armory Center for the Arts, Los Angeles (2019); Stories of Almost Everyone, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2018); Chicago Architecture Biennial (2017), 13th Istanbul Biennial (2013), the 1st and 2nd Los Angeles Biennials (2014, 2012).

Connor’s work is included in the following collections: Adam Art Gallery, Victoria University, Wellington, NZ; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, AUS; Auckland Art Gallery, Auckland, NZ; Burger Collection, Hong Kong, China; Chartwell Collection, Auckland, NZ; Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, Christchurch, NZ; Collezione La Gaia, Torino, IT; Dunedin Public Art Gallery, Dunedin, NZ; Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth, NZ; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, USA; Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle, USA; LACMA, Los Angeles, USA; Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne, AUS; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, USA; The Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington, NZ.