Fiona Hall Week 3

Research the two examples; 'Tender'(2003-05) and 'Leaf Litter'(1999-2003) to explain how they relate to this concept. First define mercantillism and explain how it has developed since the Renaissance. For each work you will need to describe the shape, form and materials of the work, and explain the ideas behind each example.

These works were part of an art show titled 'Force Field' which can be viewed in one of the exhibition spaces on Youtube - Part Three: Fiona Hall: Force Field.

Mercantilism is a system of major trade, primarilly focussed on the interests of state. Promoting the process of aquiring goods and product in society. It was the dawn of an age through which visceral enlightenment and appreciation for history roman and grecian infulence to the western world came to pass. Mercantilism impacted history by marketing trade and, fame by way of painting, sculpting, architecture, poetry, and engineering to the masses during the Italian Renaissance. It is still heavily embedded in western and global societies today. As a result poetry turned to lyrics, theater turned to movies, painting turned to make up, and sculpting to plastic surgery. In 2010 everyone's a patron.

Fiona Hall's piece 'Tender' is a collection of birds nests comprised solely of American dollar bills. In a changing world, money, has been crowned the saving grace. Even though the value fluctuates daily, and economic and financial turmoil plagues even first world countries. "The American dollar is the most desired currency in Third World countries, for those desperate for it, like birds scavenging for material to build their nests, the greenback provides shelter." Which is a direct effect of advances of capitalism, consuming everything from clean water to countries.

(Julie Ewington, Fiona Hall, Piper Press, p. 169)

The second piece 'Leaf & Litter' is a beautiful connection of botany, to todays ecological and cultural expansion. I think her style is more poetic than a historical piece and less blunt than the gore of pop art, its sort of classical like Darwin's first sketches of the Galapagos Islands. Hall said this of 'Leaf Litter' ,“Money doesn’t grow on trees–or does it? Plants have played a crucial role in the history of colonisation and the development of world economies. Many species have been responsible for the rapid growth of European power and wealth over the past five hundred years. Plants, and along with them people, have been shifted across oceans, battles have been waged over them, forests razed. But everything comes at a price, and now we are paying heavily for over-taxing the environment and for cultivating an ever-widening gap between rich and poor nations. Many of the once most plant resource-rich countries are now amongst the poorest on earth. Leaf Litter aligns the distribution of plant species with the distribution of monetary wealth.”

(http://www.roslynoxley9.com.au/news/releases/2002/10/24/35/)