Deutscher and Hackett

Awarded the honour of representing Australia at the prestigious Venice Biennale this year, Fiona Hall is widely acclaimed as one of the country's most significant contemporary artists. Grappling with some of the more complex issues facing society today - environmental degradation, capitalism and political conflict - her vast, interdisciplinary practice provokes contemplation of disturbing truths, all the while seducing the viewer with its exquisite beauty and humour. Indeed, underlying the dynamism of her art is always a compelling tension between the artist's desire to respond to her times, to explore the complexity, cruelty and terror of contemporary life and conversely, her deep love of the world in all its wonder, variety and magic. Ultimately however it is Nature which remains the abiding theme of her art, its subject and its inspiration; as Hall herself muses,''my aim is that you look at the work and think of the wonder of the original, rather than the pressures on the environment.'¹

Featuring meticulously detailed grisailles of individual leaves or sprays of foliage painted over a ground of banknotes from the plant's country of origin, Material World, 2001 eloquently encapsulates Hall's lifelong passion for the natural environment. Reminiscent of obsolescent nineteenth-century botanical engravings in their subdued, monochromatic palette, remarkably each leaf is sized to the original specimen and carefully delineated to convey an exact example of the species. While echoing the rich linear surface patterns of the notes, the leaves more noticeably contrast with their supports in the discrepancies between organic and rectangular shape, nature and culture, monochromatic and colour, and the image repertoire of the plant kingdom vis-a-vis the kingdoms of men with their portraits of heads of state, national heroes and patriotic symbols.

First introducing 'botanical banknotes' in her controversial vitrine Cash Crop, 1998 (Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney), Hall most famously exploited the motif in her encyclopaedic Leaf Litter, 1999-2003 (National Gallery of Australia, Canberra), comprising over 200 such banknotes. However, where these interpretations investigated controversial political and historical issues of colonialism, capitalism and human greed, Material World juxtaposes rather 'the spiritual' and 'the material', with each species depicted here bearing distinct 'sacred' significance. For example, the Ficus religiosa is the sacred tree under which Buddha is believed to have found enlightenment, while Gingko biloba is associated with Confucius; the Musa X paradisiaca is sacred in Hindu culture as a symbol of fertility and prosperity; and Nelumbo nucifera is the flower of Hinduism. Superimposing the natural over the cultural and the spiritual over the temporal, Material World is thus not only mesmerisingly beautiful but inescapably multifaceted in its meaning - offering a stunning example of that tension between microcosm and macrocosm so fundamental to Hall's unique vision.

1. Hall quoted in Michael, L., 'Wrong Way Time', Fiona Hall: Wrong Way Time, Australia Council for the Arts, Sydney, 2015, p. 29

VERONICA ANGELATOS