Meet an Artist

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Fiona Lee was a recipient of the MRAGM 2021 Artist Bursary. Her practice is multi-disciplinary, spanning sculpture, installation, video and photography. Most recently, her work has been fuelled by the devastating 2019 bushfires, in which she lost her family home north of Taree.

By the time Fiona graduated in Fine Art from The University of Newcastle in 2011, she had begun to question whether art could affect change. “I really questioned my voice in art,” Fiona says, “and I think that is ultimately why I stopped making.” In an effort to directly express her political concerns, she chose to dedicate her time to environmental activism. During her time away from Newcastle, Fiona met her partner and began building a home together near Taree. Over many years, they realised a long-held dream for a sustainable home, and also started a family, welcoming a daughter into the world. In 2019, when bushfires were raging across the east coast of Australia, the

house in Warrawillah that Fiona and Aaron had worked so hard to craft was lost. Fiona saw a link between the prolonged drought, the consequential extreme fire event, and climate change. Just four days after losing their home, she arrived at NSW State Parliament with a bucket of ash and debris, dumping it at the gate and demanding the government acknowledge the link between the unprecedented fire storms, the resulting devastation, and climate change. At the time, Fiona was frustrated by comments, including those made by the Deputy Prime Minister, who stated that connections between climate change and the bushfire crisis were the "ravings" of "pure, enlightened and woke capital city greenies.” Fiona says this link has now been acknowledged and points to recent changes made by the State Government since the bushfires including a commitment for net zero emissions in NSW by 2050. Her exhibition at MRAG, Unpreparable, was born from that first act at the gates of State Parliament. Over the next six months, as the rubble sat waiting for clean-up crews to gain access the property, Fiona’s art practice and her political voice became intertwined. Sorting through the mess, she was driven by a desire to represent the elements that made life on their property possible. “Initially,” she explains, “I was choosing objects that spoke to the experience of living in the bush and living off-grid and being

vulnerable to the elements. Items that spoke to survival [such as] water…we were living in drought the whole time we were there and having little to no water a lot of the time. It was so crucial to our survival so I was looking for themes of water, power, food and shelter.”

“I hope that my work can help others to grasp the existential threat of a heating world more fully and inspire action – as art can often say what words cannot.”

– FIONA LEE Fiona collected a large amount of burnt, singed, and melted items, like pieces of garden hose, pump fittings, clothing, car parts and tools. With this collection of charred remains, the family returned to Newcastle, where Fiona was welcomed back into an arts community peppered with familiar faces and old friends. Being awarded a Bushfire Artist in Residency studio at the Creator Incubator gave Fiona the space she needed to develop the works currently on display. Over a year on, with Unpreparable complete and having actively worked her way through trauma, Fiona acknowledges that she underwent “intense exposure therapy in the studio … It has really made me understand,

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process and accept what has happened.” One piece in the exhibition is created from the disfigured remains of a bull bar. Another repurposes disaster-speak, using utilitarian water devices to form the words ‘Prepare, Act, Die.’ A blunt statement, offering a prophetic warning about climate change and the real impacts extreme weather events have on people’s lives. “I hope that my work can help others to grasp the existential threat of a heating world more fully and inspire action – as art can often say what words cannot,” Fiona says. “There have been so many positive opportunities that have come from the ashes.” Unpreparable is certainly one of them. Interview: Maree Skene, Gallery Officer Unpreparable by Fiona Lee is on exhibition at MRAG from 2 October – 28 November 2021.

IMAGES 1 Fiona Lee, Photo credit: Stuart Marlin 2 Fiona Lee in her studio. Photographer: Michelle Gearin 4 Fiona's studio wall at The Creator Incubator, 2020 3 Fiona Lee and her family at a rally on the steps of NSW

Parliament where they dumped the ashes of their house and declared now was exactly the right time to talk about climate change. Photo credit: twitter. 5 Fiona's artwork Present and Future Dystopia in progress, 2020. 5