Fiona Hall Mentorship: project overview

When my boat comes in (detail)
Fiona Hall - 2002 - present - gouache on banknotes
© Fiona Hall 2002

Kirsten was one of four young Australian artists to be awarded a 2007 Media Arts Mentorship, a grant from the Visual Arts Board of the Australia Council intended to promote interaction between young artists and established practitioners. The mentorship will be facilitated by Experimenta Media Arts.

Throughout 2008, Kirsten will work under the mentorship of esteemed Australian visual artist Fiona Hall. Hall's practice ranges from photography to object-making and, most recently, video, and reveals ongoing, deep-seated concerns with humanity's relationship with nature. These concerns have resulted in aesthetically exquisite, often deeply unsettling artworks, which both question and explore the legacies of imperialism, colonialism and capitalism upon our relationship with nature, and our relationships with each other.

Thus far, the mentorship has consisted of Kirsten acting as artists assistant on Fiona's major retrospective exhibition Force Field at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney and the City Gallery, Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand in 2008.

The mentorship has also resulted in an ongoing conversation between Kirsten and Fiona regarding making work that intersects with nature in various ways, and the eating of rice balls and the drinking of tea, while rambling for hours on topics such as the lichen genus.

- process diary of Fiona Hall Mentorship activities and goings-on
- photos to do with the Mentorship

press coverage:
Magic under the surface - article in the Australian - 7/3/2008
Media Art Mentorship - press release from Australia Council - 21/9/07

Kirsten + Fiona inspecting Kirsten's installation The Birds Path (after Herschel) at Firstdraft Gallery, part of the About, above project.