Fiona Long Art

I decided for my nets, maps and grids project to do a tribute on Rememberance Sunday to those who gave their lives for us at war. The red ribbon signifies the blood that was shed. I went to the Tate Modern where there are lots of very closely planted silver birch trees which I think are beautiful. I then wrapped the red ribbon around the trunks of the trees in a grid like formation. Loads of people asked me what I was doing. I told them that it was a piece of art in commemoration of Rememberence Sunday and they all seemed pretty happy with that. Everyone seemed to like it including a nice security guard from the Tate Modern who asked me if it was an art project and said I should take lots of photos. I overheard one man though, walking along with his wife saying “No dear, it’s to stop people walking through the trees…. well, I suppose it could be art!” A lot of people assumed I’d been commissioned by the Tate Modern I think! Maybe one day, but for now I’m happy to have some art work at least in the grounds of the Tate Modern! I wonder how long it will stay there? It would be interesting to know what reactions it would have got if I weren’t in the grounds of a modern art museum. People seemed very open to it being art there but I wonder what people would have thought if I’d done it in Hyde Park? Perhaps art is context dependant!

Leviticus: 18:22 Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination is often quoted by bigots and homophobes but they neglect to mention other strongly worded verses nearby in the same book of The Bible such as: Leviticus: 11:12 Whatsoever hath no fins nor scales in the waters, that shall be an abomination unto you. So if one considers homosexuality an abomination just on the say so of The Bible then they should also consider it an abomination to eat shellfish. I’m sure there are plenty of people bandying about the homosexuality quote who quite happily tuck into a nice plate of prawns or mussels and don’t bat an eyelid at that. I find this hypocrisy maddening and would like to create a body of work exploring the issue. I believe that there are various ridiculous things said in the Old Testament basically as public health warnings and as a way of controlling the masses which are totally outdated in today’s society. These are the tablets of stone with the Biblical quotations on them. I have made seven. This is partly because seven is a number of great significance in The Bible and to superstitious people. It is also the ideal number for hopscotch. I have laid the tablets of stone on the floor in a hopscotch formation so that they can be jumped on! The first reason for this is that it is rather blasphemous and shows a lack of respect for the writings in The Bible. It demonstrates visually how irrelevant a large proportion of society now considers its teachings, especially those of the Old Testament, and yet many still continue to use that one particular quote. Also, in the game of hopscotch, stones are thrown in order to select a stone. This references both the casting of stones but also the way in which people pick and choose which particular passages of The Bible they quote for their own ends. www.fionalongart.co.uk

What would the earliest book have been? OK it probably didn't come until the printing press but it is possible that cave men would do "pages" of "cave" paintings on skins of their prey to communicate stories of the hunt to each other. We wouldn't know if they had as they would have disintegrated by now so I decided to recreate what may have been....... I believe that meat eaters should be aware of where their food comes from and the processes it went through before it got to the supermarket shelf all neatly wrapped in plastic, not looking like an animal at all. If people can't handle the realities of meat eating then perhaps they shouldn't be eating it at all. These animals had a happy life in the wild, a quick death and were entirely utilised. Their skins and meat were not wasted. I have even used their skulls and legs. Admittedly I haven't used these parts for survival tools but at least they weren't just thrown away as they would have been (including the skins). I thanked the rabbits before I skinned them and they fed my family for more than two meals. My rabbit skin project was rather unpleasant to do but very rewarding. I am proud of myself for confronting my food and the processes behind it. I have already had some very interesting feedback regarding my rabbit project. Many people have been initially appalled, particularly by my process photos, seeing limbs and heads being cut off for example! I explained my feelings and beliefs about how if people eat meat then they should be aware of what it is that they are eating and how it got to their table. Meat is not just something you buy from the supermarket that comes in neat little packages, wrapped in cellophane. It was an animal and people should be in touch with that. Many of the people who were initially appalled did not just mellow their opinions but actually commended my work. I found this fascinating and was really pleased to have got this across so it made me want to take this work further. I think it is important to relate it to this day and age and the way that we are so out of touch with what meat actually is. This work has a conversation with my original rabbit piece. This piece relates directly to the modern day act of shopping and reflects our alienation from the process of meat manufacture. These plastic shopping bags are stretched over the metal shopping baskets in a similar way to the stretching of the rabbit skins onto the wooden hoops. I have used plastic cable ties instead of the natural string I used in the rabbit piece. Instead of the painted images I used in the previous piece I adhered digital photographs onto the plastic bags as I feel that these are the present day equivalent to cave paintings. These photographs show scenes of “modern man” locating a supermarket on the internet, driving in a car to the supermarket, looking at neatly packages chicken breast and processed chicken nuggets which are even further abstracted away from the original animal itself. Instead of dragging the beasts home, the produce will be shown being loaded into the plastic shopping bags and finally loaded into the fridge. I feel that the credit card transaction is the equivalent to “the kill”. I have used digital darkroom to turn these digital photographs into barcodes to demonstrate how the act of obtaining our meat nowadays is an act of consumerism.

This large sculpture is made from old electrical components and circuit boards from outdated and discarded electrical equipment. Technology changes and is changed perhaps even faster than the city so I felt that this was the perfect metaphor for this project. The circuit boards are also hidden under layers and you need to hunt below the surface to find them. The map like quality of the piece is down to the small components fused onto the circuit boards (with flux in some cases) which resemble buildings and the wires connecting the separate sectors are like an urban infrastructure of roads and tube lines. See www.flickr.com/photos/fionalongart/sets/72157600429778067/ for details www.fionalongart.co.uk You can see my brother's photos of this piece at flickr.com/photos/karllong/sets/72157600545200803/

My installation made from entirely salvaged materials from London shows what we discard all over our city. It overhangs and looks very precarious giving the viewer a real sense that it could change at any moment! Flux comes from Latin and refers to flow. There is a psychological condition called Flux or Flow which is characterised, amongst many other things: by a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity. This is how I have been during my final major project which is all centred in and about my city environment so perhaps I’m in a state of Urban Flux! I am interested in the hybridisation of ideas across many academic fields so I was particularly intrigued to discover, in my research, an art movement called Fluxus set up in the 1960s which encouraged blending different artistic media and disciplines including not only visual art, music and literature but also architecture and urban planning! I started this project looking at urban decay but realised through wide ranging research and planning my concept that is wasn’t just the aesthetic of the disintegration of our city that I was interested in. It’s the way that our urban environment changes that fascinates me. We are living in this constant cycle of building up, modifying, breaking down, throwing away, reconstructing all exacerbated by the effects of nature. The effect of the elements causes so much urban change that we often just patch over and this causes many of the aesthetic effects that inspired me to embark on this project. I wanted people to be aware of their surroundings and the beauty that surrounds them. You don’t need to be at a scenic view point with a picnic area to see beauty. The simple cracking paint on a door ravaged by the wind and the rain, revealing almost forgotten layers underneath can be a thing of tremendous aesthetic quality. You just need to learn to see. But I’ve realised that it’s not purely the decay or disintegration of our urban environment that interests me but the constant change or flux which it undergoes, a continual battle between man and nature which almost personifies the vibrancy of our city. My major final pieces almost map what is urban and show the flux of the city. I have made a large sculpture using old electrical components and circuit boards from outdated and discarded electrical equipment. Technology changes and is changed perhaps even faster than the city so I felt that this was the perfect metaphor for this project. The circuit boards are also hidden under layers and you need to hunt below the surface to find them. The map like quality of the piece is down to the small components fused onto the circuit boards (with flux in some cases) which resemble buildings and the wires connecting the separate sectors are like an urban infrastructure of roads and tube lines. This marries with my painting on a similar scale made from fragmented images from Google Earth blown up to differing degrees, reorientated and repeated to create a disorientating but clearly urban scene. I painted layers according to tone and then allowed a grey cracked area to appear to creep over the canvas, showing the process of urban change. My installation made from entirely salvaged materials from London shows what we discard all over our city. It overhangs and looks very precarious giving the viewer a real sense that it could change at any moment! Apart from my research at art galleries, libraries, watching television and searching the internet for artist inspiration, I have found wandering the streets of London enormously rich in source material for this project. I have taken literally thousands of photographs which have been tremendously assistive in this project and I feel that they will continue to be for years to come. My first step was to undertake many experiments. I tried a huge range of different materials and techniques to pin down exactly what I wanted to do for my final pieces and which methods I wanted to use. I often learn by doing and find the process most useful. It is good to have a large selection to choose from and one cannot discover incredible new things without trying many techniques and media, inevitably, a number of which will not work out. I have evaluated my successes and failures as I have gone along and learned a lot from them. Consulting my peers and tutors has also been an important part of my learning curve. Inspired by Lucio Fontana’s slashed canvasses, I used salvaged slashed canvasses to display the fragility of our urban environment. Ellsworth Kelly, Antoni Tapies and Anselm Kiefer were all useful starting points for my research and I have developed further ideas from continuing my research and experimentation to create what I feel is a well rounded, original body of work which embodies my concept of urban flux. You can see more photos at flickr.com/photos/karllong/sets/72157600545200803/