Artist Statement
Common threads in my work include the use of instructions, time-based media, and esoteric technologies. This is paired with an ongoing interest in how the past inhabits the present. In this respect, the prefix re is in constant use: return, revenant, remediate, reinvent, and residue all reoccur in the writings that describe my various projects. The impulse to riffle through discarded or disavowed material objects is interwoven with an exploration of obsolete lens-based technologies.
Process Statement
The process of working with antiquated photographic techniques led me to reflect further on the ethereal nature of photography. Because photographs are tangible manifestations of intangible moments they can be associated with the phenomena of specters: ghostly manifestations that give material presence to the immaterial. With this in mind, I investigate how photographic imprints act as an echo of matter - a manifestation of time’s wreckage. This anachronistic method of working explores an alchemical territory, the result of which is often but a whisper of an image.
Fiona Annis is a Montréal-based visual artist and researcher whose interdisciplinary practice emphasizes the use of scores and time-based media. In 2008 she completed a master's degree at the Glasgow School of Art and she is currently pursuing a practice-led PhD at Concordia University. Fiona has exhibited in national and international contexts including: The AC Institute (New York City), The Canadian Centre for Architecture (Montréal) Goldsmith's University (London), LowSalt Gallery (Glasgow), and The Art Gallery of Alberta (Edmonton). Her work has been published in BlackFlash Magazine, Front: Contemporary Art & Ideas, Les Fleurs du Mal, and Imagining Science, winner of the New York Book Show Award. Her most recent cycle of work, The After-Image (Swan Songs), is a romantic conceptual rendering of the slippage between fact and fiction within a documentary framework. Fiona is currently exploring the alchemical potential of antiquated photographic processes, a trajectory that was recently put into motion in the context of an artist residency at The Center for Alternative Photography in New York City.
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