|
|
Fiona Kinsella is a mixed media artist and a painter, and has received recognition both provincially and nationally with grants awarded by the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts. Kinsella’s work has been exhibited across Canada, and in the US and Europe. In 2008, Fiona Kinsella was short-listed for Ontario's prestigious KM Hunter Artists Awards.
Bringing a whole new meaning to the concept of a "sweet tooth," Hamilton native Fiona Kinsella adorns saccharine canvases with bones, teeth, claws and glass eyes, alongside pieces of vintage cutlery, in her mixed-media series The Wilderness. "The media lists that accompany the works read like sublime recipes; the combinations of sweetness and duress, literally sugar and tears, suggest joy and heartbreak in a simultaneous instant," writes Art Gallery of Hamilton curator Sara Knelman. Mix together one cup of shock with one cup of awe and serve at the New Gallery.
The Calgary Herald
Swerve - fun listings + CALGARY INSIDE & OUT Going Out: Nov. 16-22 Art Show: Fiona Kinsella: The Wilderness Friday, November 16, 2007 Calgary, Alberta
|
|
|
Canadian artist Kinsella was in last summer’s "Eponymous" group show at Zeitgeist; her assemblages of emu eggs, velvet and lace stood out as the most exquisite objects on display. She returns to Ruby Green this month for a full-fledged show featuring works in which wedding cakes serve as a vehicle for ruminations on identity; in one potent image, an array of dental tools and a mass of hair erupt out of a square of lily-white cake. She’s paired here, in a show appropriately titled "Good Housekeeping," with Mariah Johnson, whose paintings incorporate fabric and images of Southern domesticity. In one series, Johnson arranges stacks of colorful bed sheets and pillowcases to create sculptural forms reminiscent of abstract paintings.
At Ruby Green Contemporary Art Center
Nashville, Tennessee
Nashville Scene - CRITIC's PICKS
February 9, 2006
Fiona Kinsella & Mariah Johnson:
"GOOD HOUSEKEEPING"
—DAVID MADDOX / JONATHAN MARX
Everything Has Its Price
The pervasive marketplace provides common ground for much of Zeitgeist's summer show
Eponymous at Zeitgeist Gallery
"At first glance, the commercial impulse seems distant from the work of Fiona Kinsella. She has created the most beautiful objects in the show, emu eggs covered with lace and doilies, placed on a bed of rabbit fur inside velvet-lined reliquary boxes. Most of the eggs have small boxes made of metal filigree inserted into their centers, which hold material like a dried umbilical cord or a few horse hairs, possibly real personal relics. The most discordant element in these heterogeneous assemblages is that the egg, its lace or doily covering, and in some cases the filigree box are tightly wrapped in plastic, as if they had been packaged for transport and sale. Each is a unique and exquisite object presented for veneration, but the packaging thrusts it into the commercial realm, suggesting that the aura surrounding such an object is still something manufactured and sold."
- Nashville Scene, Nashville Tennessee - 2005
By David Maddox
|
|
All Things White and Beautiful
Creating imperfect beauty is a piece of cake for Fiona Kinsella. The Hamilton artist's installation work is showcased in the Wilderness, a must-see exhibition at the transit gallery.
Beauty and the anticipation of bodily indulgence draw us in. A big table covered with a clean white cloth and loads of white cakes beckons.
- Hamilton Spectator, Hamilton ON, April 17, 2007
by Regina Haggo
She gets at things elliptically, metaphorically, in a way that makes you work towards meaning. But she has done it all with such focus of material and theme and with such visual crispness that one enjoys losing ones self in the maze.
Her clenching of the female art of doily and lace against the male science of anatomy and medicine is a brilliant stroke, both visually and thematically.
- Hamilton Spectator, Hamilton, Ontario - 1997
by Jeff Mahoney
|
|
