Community Notice Board (Riverside)
Community Notice Board (Riverside)
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Artist
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Production Date
2015
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Medium
custom freestanding bulletin board, paint, silkscreen and UV print,on aluminium plates, pins, staples, tape, concrete
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Size
2500 x 1700 x 300 mm
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Credit
Chartwell Collection, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, purchased 2016
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Accession Number
C2016/1/5.1-3
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Accession Date
14 Mar 2016
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Department
New Zealand Art
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Classification
Object
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Collection
Chartwell
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Description
Fiona Connor’s new work, Community Notice Boards, looks to the processes and physical forms of socially driven content generation, management and circulation. Her sculptures are quoted from existing bulletin boards found in various geographical locations (laundromats, libraries, cafes etc in Los Angeles, Basel, New York and New Zealand). Each board is photographed at the site then re-constructed in Connor’s Los Angeles studio. The changeable displays are reproduced by Connor for perpetuity; paper materials (such as advertisements, flyers, wanted or lost-and-found notices) are rendered in aluminum, where fittings (such as thumb-tacks, frames, latches) are produced using the same materials as if commercially manufactured, then arranged according to the originals.
Connor’s Community Notice Boards are cumulative compositions, complete with trompe l’oeil environmental effects; deterioration, accumulations, incidental marks, and signs of use. Connor builds up a patina of age through a variety of painterly and sculptural techniques. Her methodical process includes physical re-enactment –rough scribbles are gouged, pins pierce, sellotape accumulates or leaves residue where removed, patches are faded, water marks dribbled – to trace or map human activity upon these surfaces.
Connor’s concern here is with the social life of the object; how their surfaces make explicit the durational impact of multiple forces, most significantly human imprint and the effects of entropic decline. Connor’s works are physical registers of community activity; residues of a ‘messy democratic process’ where communities arrange content according to their own needs. The community serviced by each board is determined by place and proximity, as opposed to their digital counterparts (familiarized by skeuomorphic design) where content is generated through endlessly linked search terms with extensive social, cultural and geographical reach. In the face of advanced, more immediate, and immaterial means of communication, Connor’s Community Notice Boards both celebrate the “social networks of sites experienced IRL only”, and function as relics documenting their own obsolescence.
