Fiona Davies

Born 1955, Sydney
Bachelor of Visual Arts
Graduation show: 1986
Graduation ceremony: 1987

Artworks in Space YZ

School Fire, 1985
Glass, metal and found objects
Two pieces, 32 x 39 cm each

My Grandad always said, ‘It’s easier to clean up after a fire than a flood’, circa 1988
Mural photograph and found object
72 x 100 cm

The two small glass works are from a work I made in second year. It originally consisted of I think sixteen panels. At least half were broken during the installation of the work for assessment. Near where I lived was the ruin of a school destroyed by fire. These glass works overlay the residue of burnt architectural fragments with the emotional landscape of desolation and grief. The dress work was made a year or so after I had left art school in response to another fire and to reimagining a flood, and marks the start of my ongoing interest in the abject.

School Fire (detail), 1985

I started at art school the first year a degree course in Visual Arts was offered at UWS in 1984. I was stunned by the intensity of the course. All the ideas and programmes felt brand-new but not completely finished. We had four and a half days a week of full-on teaching and seemed to be all together all the time. It was exhilarating to be taken seriously and for the process of making art to be taken so seriously.

The skills of practice I developed during this three-year period are still fundamental to my continuing art making. All of us, as Donal Fitzpatrick used to say, “should be able to talk about our work under wet cement”. It was not OK to say the work should “speak for itself”. The pace of the foundation program in year one helped me to develop a serious work ethic and an obsessive need for conceptual rigour. Basically, to believe in your worth, but to never get too comfortable.

Visit Fiona Davies’ website here.