Video: Murderous beauty. Fighter planes in Fiona Banner's installation
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
Contemporary art, among other things, requires ingenuity, originality and uniqueness from authors. The work of Briton Fiona Banner undoubtedly meets these criteria: at her last exhibition at Tate Britain, she presented an installation of two fighter planes - Harrier and Jaguar.
Both aircraft are real and previously used by the British Armed Forces. The Harrier is placed vertically, occupying the entire space of the gallery from ceiling to floor and from wall to wall, and on its surface Fiona depicted feathers, drawing an analogy with a hawk. The jaguar lies in the southern part of the gallery - belly up, the paint has been removed from it, and the plane is polished to a shine. It is impossible to refrain from comparisons: the Harrier resembles a tied bird, and the Jaguar is a wounded animal. “The power of Fiona Banner's installation lies in the simple but unexpected juxtaposition: two fighters in neoclassical gallery interiors,” says Penelope Curtis, director of Tate Britain.
Fiona Banner confesses that she "fell in love" with fighters at first sight after seeing a Harrier flying by at the age of seven. In her opinion, one cannot but admire the crushing power and appearance of these machines. But not everything is so simple, and their beauty is deceiving and dangerous. “It's hard to believe that these aircraft were designed to function, they are so beautiful,” says the author. “But nevertheless it is so, and their function is to kill. The fact that we find them beautiful casts doubt on the very concept of beauty, as well as our own intellectual and moral position. I'm interested in the clash between what we feel and what we think."
Fiona Banner was born in 1966 and lives and works in London. In 2002 she was nominated for the Turner Prize. The author's works include sculpture, drawing and installation.
Recommended:
Breathtaking black and white photos of planes flying overhead
First of all - planes … Apparently, this is exactly what Austrian photographer Josef Hoflener decided to himself, going with his son to Maho Beach, which is located next to the runway of Princess Juliana International Airport. The fact is that it is there that planes fly over vacationers so low that people are simply breathtaking. It was this moment that the photographer tried to convey in a series of black and white photographs, relaxing on the beach from 2009 to 2011
How planes were hijacked in the USSR, and who dared to commit such a flagrant crime
According to publicly available information, in the history of the USSR there have been more than a hundred hijackings of aircraft, some of which have a happy ending. But there are also known particularly daring, desperate, cruel crimes that ended in the deaths of innocents and the sacrifice of the crews. Although some motives can be called noble in one way or another, disasters often occurred during their performance
Paper planes - nostalgia and homesickness
How do you feel when you see hundreds of paper airplanes flying around a huge empty hall? The artist, who breaks off under the pseudonym Dawn NG, believes that it should be nostalgia and homesickness. As an illustration of these considerations, he created an unusual installation called "I fly like paper get high like planes"
"Murderous" beauty. Waste Bullet Jewelry from Impact Accessories
Of all the anti-war peacekeeping actions, the most beautiful and creative were and remain art projects, in which deadly weapons are transformed into harmless, cute little things filled with kindness and love. For example, in the original musical instruments, like Pedro Reyes, paintings by David Palmer, art objects by Magnus Gjoen, which we have already written about. Or, here is the beautiful handmade jewelry made from spent bullets by the creative team of Impac studio
Street Fighter Art: Modern Art Inspired by Street Fighter
Opened in February 2013 at the Bait boutique in San Francisco, the exhibition focuses on one of the most popular video games of the late 1980s, Street Fighter. "Fighter", as it turned out, not only influenced the development of the gaming industry, but also gave many representatives of contemporary art food for thought