Week 3 - Fiona Hall's work and Mercantillism

Week 3- Fiona Hall's work and Mercantillism

' Leaf Litter' (1999-2003)








'Tender' (2003-05)

Fiona Hall'scontemporary work relates to the Renaissance concept of Mercntillism.

Define mercantillism and explain how it has developed since the Renaissance.
About 1450, Renaissance appeared in Europe means ‘rebirth’, this is the beginning of the modern history. The modern history starts means to explore new lands. This is the new age in Europe. Italian cities traded with the Arabs, this was the ideas of exchanged along with goods started.Instead of religious topics in the paintings, realistic became more important. Realistic means more art works were asked to be done by members from rich families during early renaissance, art works showed nature and depicting feelings of people. Realistic is very important link between Renaissance and Mercantillism. Mercantilism defined as ‘The theory and system of political economy prevailing in Europe after the decline of feudalism, based on national policies of accumulating bullion, establishing colonies and a merchant marine, and developing industry and mining to attain a favorable balance of trade.’ (www.answers.com)

Describe the shape, form and materials of the work and explain the ideas behind each example.

Money is a tool of exchange things, a sign to show how its economy is powerful of a country. But does that mean richer only can bring better life to us? This question can be seen in Finoa’s two works. Both work used paper currency as the main material. In Leaf litter (1990-2003), in this painting we can see leaves formed as a Christmas tree as life-size, these leaves portrait over banknotes which from the leaf’s country of origin. Pollution by human is so serious at this stage, human use materials from nature to produce different goods, for example paper is produced from trees, but can paper turn back to trees after we using? Of course the answer is no, doesn’t matter how much money we spen, paper can’t turn back to trees. Life-size leaves over the 183 banknotes highlight that money can’t buy anything, money can’t buy nature back after human destroy it. In the work Tender (2003-05), different shapes of birds’ nests are made from shredded US dollar bills. This work tells story about how the modern life effects on the habitat of different species on this planet, like birds. These different shapes of the nests symbolized different living areas, just like we can see many different styles of houses and buildings are around us in different places. Architecture gets higher and higher. There are thousands of kinds of birds on this planet, but century after century, our earth is developed so fast that people ignore about the order of the nature, instead, human start to cut trees, building roads etc, these destroy wild animal’s lifestyle, so they start to move to another place or become extinct. To protect our natural environment is more important than making stronger economy system in today’s life.

reference

http://www.cultureandrecreation.gov.au/articles/fionahall/

http://www.dbmagazine.com.au/363/viz-FionaHall.shtml

http://www.artreview.com.au/art/profiles/artists/buzz-review-fiona-hall.aspx