Garden of Earthly Delights

First the gardeners unloaded from their carts a collection of Caladiums. There were some remarkable specimens… like the Virginale, which seemed to have been cut out of oilskin or sticking-plaster … The one called Madame Mame, seemed to be simulating zinc, parodying bits of punched metal coloured emperor green and spattered with drops of oil paint, streaks of red lead and white ... Another plant, the Alocasi Metallica, [was] covered with a coat of greenish bronze with glints of silver, it was the supreme masterpiece of artifice; anyone would have mistaken it for a bit of stove-pipe cut into a pike- head pattern by the makers … Not one of them looked real; it was as if cloth, paper, porcelain, and meta, had been lent by man to Nature to enable her to create these.

(J.K. Huysmans, Against Nature, 1884)

Huysmans describes a world in which we 'rear, shape, paint and carve … to suit [our] fancy' and relentlessly impose our own synthetic, manufactured world on nature. The description underlines the role of the garden as a site of interaction between the human world and the natural world — a complex microcosm of structures based on power and pleasure. As a physical place, the garden is an environment where we enjoy being amongst the external, visible aspects of nature — the trees, plants, insects. In the garden, our own naturalness, physicality, is also conspicuous by way of our senses which are continually aroused and engaged. When we consider the garden as a concept, it becomes a symbol of our ideal world: the site represents a human conception of nature that is harmonious, pleasurable and set apart from the chaotic reality of our surroundings. It is a place which we value because of its natural elements, but we nevertheless contain and control it to meet our own terms.

The territory that Fiona Hall circumscribes is intricate and layered; she is influenced by a variety of perspectives and experiences. Initially a painter, Hall took up photography in 1974 and has since used several other media, including sculpture and ceramics. She grew up in Sydney and now lives and works in Adelaide. She also travels to the United States, Europe and Asia, and has resided in Melbourne, Hobart, New York and London. Ideas and beliefs that she explores are drawn primarily from European and, more recently, Eastern traditions. A focus of Hall's work is the point where humankind and nature meet — our place, and our plight, within the world as they have been represented through mythologies and histories. Her concepts and imagery incorporate allusions to a symbolic garden. They are also influenced very much by her own lifestyle: an interest in horticulture and her garden at home. The location of the garden shifts, therefore, between the archetypal garden and her personal domain which she explores and cultivates.

We perceive nature in different ways. The original garden of Christian belief, the Garden of Eden, is an earthly paradise in which all plant species coexist, and are appealing and nourishing. It is the location of innocence — where humankind initially existed harmoniously and virtuously within nature. It was a temporary sanctuary, however, as it also became the site where our betrayal of nature began and from where we were ultimately exiled. It has become a lost paradise which we continually strive to regain. Much of Fiona Hall's imagery is based just outside the garden wall: it depicts the circumstance of contemporary human existence and our persistently tenuous relationship with nature.

The idea of the Garden of Eden as a nurturing haven highlights its physical aspects and is consistent with a traditional perspective that nature has feminine attributes. The sensuous qualities — the earthly delights — of a domestic garden are manifest in all aspects of Hall's work. Her use of contrasting textures and surfaces imparts a luxurious tactility. She utilises materials in ways that create a sense of mystery whereby we must look beyond superficial appearances and through various layers to discover clues to their true properties. Also, a sense of metamorphosis is present, as Hall's materials are often expendable, sometimes even repellent, yet she transforms them meticulously into objects that are sophisticated and enticing. She works across different media — photography, sculpture, drawing and ceramics — and fosters the notion that: 'All art forms have limitations of their medium but are unlimited within these boundaries. It is the decision of the artist as to where her own limitations lie and to where she places the limitations of her chosen medium.' (Fiona Hall, in Maureen Gilchrist's Thoughts and Images, catalogue, Melbourne, 1974.) By merging aspects from sculpture and photography, for example, she manipulates our perception of them through subverting the nature of the materials or exploiting the technical characteristics of each medium. As a result there is an illusory quality about Hall's work that is precipitated by the combination of elements. Her domain is an Epicurean garden in which simple, neglected materials become pleasurable and revealing.

One of the ways we exercise our control over nature is to perceive it as an inanimate, machine-like system. It is through systems and classifications that we order elements of nature so that it is comprehensible and compliant. Fiona Hall's work includes structures such as linguistics and scientific schemes. And her ideas and imagery, in common with her materials, are based on opposing concepts such as good and evil, old and new. She re-formulates and fabricates aspects of history, science and culture to contrast forgotten or recondite knowledge with attributes of contemporary life. The legacy of Western art is an important influence; explicit references to that tradition recur in Hall's imagery. But her principal source is literature from which she often interprets concepts visually. Her predilection for particular literary works or writers is based on her own notions of contemporary human experience. The poetry of T.S. Eliot, for example, has been a primary influence. His meditation on the nature of time in Four Quartets evokes Hall's habit of contemplating current situations by reflecting back to the past to map the routes that we have already travelled. Her desire to investigate recurrent themes, to return to familiar territory, is a process of re-familiarisation and enrichment through which the subjects become increasingly complex. Hall likens the evolution of her ideas and imagery to 'a spiral path encircling a hill. Every once in a while, whilst climbing the hill on this path, find yourself in an area which you have traversed before but you are at a bit higher elevation.' (Fiona Hall in, Timothy Morrell's Some Provincial Myths, catalogue, Adelaide, 1987.)

Fiona Hall's approach to black and white photography incorporates some traditions of nineteenth-century practice. Many of her images have been taken with old and unwieldy equipment — with a view camera or a panoramic camera — which dictate the ways in which they can be used. In particular, the large-format view camera is less than portable and requires the photographer to patiently set up the equipment, compose her subject and load an 8 x 10 inch plate negative for each shot. Contemporary photographers generally use these processes to ensure technically 'fine' prints in which formal considerations are paramount. It is the approach that Hall took when she began photographing in the early 1970s and she has since returned to it intermittently. Her earliest black and white photographs were of her surroundings. Conventionally, nineteenth-century photographers attempted to describe either an undefiled, natural landscape or to give evidence of the ordering influence of human, industrial progress. In contrast, Fiona Hall's landscapes are frequently domestic environments littered with the debris of suburban existence, such as Wantirna South, Victoria, 1986, in which a collection of abandoned vacuum cleaners stand out like exotic botanical specimens amongst the garden plants. Many of her photographs are obsessively detailed with shadows, patterns and textures which create visually complex images. Leura, New South Wales, 1974, for example, is like a medieval tapestry which has no point for the eye to centre, the patterns of the couch and carpet merging and entwining to flatten space and transform the scene into an intricate overall design.

In a series of photographs taken during 1980, Fiona Hall examined iconic images from the history of art. Using postcard reproductions as her guide she reconstructed, then photographed, scenes depicted in paintings and prints by Van Gogh, Cézanne, Hokusai, Jan Van Eyck, Matisse, Botticelli and Mondrian. Her fabrications consisted of incongruous objects and discarded materials which remain identifiable yet take on new significance when combined. These associations are not a matter of chance: like theatre props, the unorthodox materials were consciously selected and arranged. Collectively they function as diagrammatic representations of pictorial elements and undermine, at the same time revitalise, conventional perceptions of the famous works of art that they mimic. 'The Great Wave', after Hokusai, 1980, has patterned cloth, confetti, banana skins and surfing postcards, and Mount Fuji in the background is formed from a child's sneakers. 'The Marriage of the Arnolfini', after Jan Van Eyck, 1980, picks up on the symbolism that Van Eyck had integrated into the details of the wedding scene. While his scene is probable, Hall's photograph, with its magazine images, plastic model toys and anatomical illustrations, reveals her intervention and the artifice of the studio setting.

The painting reconstructions were Fiona Hall's first foray into the studio. The Antipodean Suite, 1981, produced while she was Artist-in-Residence at the Tasmanian School of Art, is an investigation of further 'constructions'. The photographs explore the ways in which we order the external environment by imposing artificial constructs such as scientific systems and classifications. The subjects are varied, including collections of bird specimens at the Queen Victoria Museum, Launceston, and scientific structures fabricated in the studio by Hall. Southern Cyclone System, 1981, for example, illustrates the variables of weather in a tabletop model: Hall uses cotton wool to represent cloud formations, movements of cold and warm air are labelled as in a meteorological map, and the 'eye' of the storm glares out at us threateningly. The Antipodean Suite is a culmination of different experiences and views of the world. Fiona Hall points out that: 'These photographs came about through a desire to transcribe into visual, photographic terms some aspects of what is often still referred to as the Antipodes. They are inspired by some of the phenomena in this part of the globe, and in relation to the other half of the planet. Literal "meaning" is not the intention. Rather a visual exploration, an apprehension and comprehension of the material which comes to hand, and eye, to arrive at the cohesion of an idea.' (Fiona Hall, The Antipodean Suite, catalogue, Hobart, 1981.)

The Genesis series, 1984, recounts the sequence of humankind's creation, fall from grace and expulsion from Eden. The four toned photographs are pivotal in Fiona Hall's career as they set her on the path of the investigation into morality. Hall's vision, however, is not moralistic or bleak. The theme of human virtues and vices is introduced, but is not developed beyond simply illustrating, in contemporary terms, the narrative of Adam and Eve. In the Genesis series the traditional Christian theme of loss of innocence and consequent misuse of Paradise is evoked through a collage of modern machine imagery. This Garden of Eden is comprised of drill bits, oil cans and cogs and, in Exit from Eden, Adam and Eve have become modern travellers descending a staircase of matching luggage. The themes of sin and exile are simplified and dispassionate, perhaps to echo a superficiality which preoccupies much of our increasingly mechanised lifestyles.

In subsequent series, Hall has continued her exploration of human morality in relation to other extant codes. During 1984 she produced a series that was based on the well-known moral theme of the seven deadly sins — Avarice, Envy, Gluttony, Lechery, Pride, Sloth, Wrath. The Morality dolls — seven deadly sins are seven grotesque, yet captivating, marionettes assembled from photocopied anatomical diagrams. The figures anthropomorphise the vices, with their body parts acting as metaphors for each particular sin. Avarice is six grasping arms and a huge eye; Envy has a heart instead of a head, a single eyeball leers from the depth of its belly and its bandaged hands seem to have got their fingers burnt; Gluttony consists of tongues, throat, stomach, intestine and 'eyes' on stalks; Wrath is not 'spineless', with its limbs of vertebrae, a studded armour of teeth, a yelling mouth and its 'hair' standing on end. The chimerical forms of the Morality dolls — seven deadly sins satirise basic human characteristics, which have always existed and continue to be relevant in the twentieth century. The individuals are denied volition and there is a sense of inexorability as these beasts are controlled by someone else pulling the strings.

The Seven Deadly Sins, 1985, also represents attributes of the seven mortal vices. Hall accumulated a profusion of seemingly unrelated paraphernalia — book illustrations, tools, food tins, sausages, price tags — assembled into intricate still lifes which she then placed before the camera. The photographs were produced in Sydney as part of the '20 x 24 Polaroid Project'. Each artist spent two days in a studio using a very large Polaroid camera that produces 20 x 24 inch prints. The Polaroid process is instantaneous, but the setting up of all elements before the camera is critically important. Hall's experience in fabricating scenes for her photographs meant that the Polaroid process was perfectly suited to her methods and themes. The Seven Deadly Sins is reminiscent of 'Vanitas' the tradition of still-life painting in which objects such as hourglasses, skulls and decaying food and plants were included to remind the viewer of their own mortality. The abundance of minutiae from which each photograph is composed emphasises the transience of life and the futility of amassing worldly wealth. Characteristics that are specific to large Polaroid photographs operate in communicating these moral lessons: the photographs entice us with warm, creamy colours and sumptuous surfaces, but they also depict the objects and details as larger than life, highlighting the excesses of some earthly preoccupations.

During the summers of 1984 and 1985 Hail photographed people at the beach. Her decision to photograph at the beach was influenced by the light and openness of the space, but more significantly the openness or uninhibitedness of people in that environment — 'where bodies and emotions are unveiled and made accessible, where the camera is given licence to divulge yet does not intrude.' (Fiona Hall in, Alan Cruickshank's Common Ground/Personal l, catalogue, Adelaide, 1985) The photographs were taken with a large-format camera which is commonly confined to static subjects. Its size foils any possibility of spontaneity so that these people, although possibly not directed by Hall, are definitely complicit in the photographic act. The main advantages of using this unwieldy equipment are technical. Contact prints are made from the negatives which are 8 x 10 inches in size; as a result they are sharper and have much finer detail than prints which are enlarged from smaller negatives. Hall's photographs are superb descriptions of the subjects' physicality — a baby's smooth skin, a youth's wiry, sun-bleached hair. These images are amongst the few works by Hall that focus on real people. They are represented as flesh — palpable and warmed in the summer sun. Figures entwine and intersect but do not acknowledge each other.

Comet Book, 1986, and Untitled, 1986, were made during the launch of the 'Giotto' satellite and the passing of Halley's Comet. They each represent distinct concepts of space. Comet Book depicts our curiosity about outer space, the realms beyond our own planet. Untitled, in contrast, appears to represent Limbo: a Christian conception of the oblivion bordering Hell where bodies float ceaselessly. The 'books' are concertina constructions made from paper which open out like accordions. They are reminiscent of children's books in which details pop up and pull out: the appeal is not only in the drawings but in the sense of discovery when the viewer is drawn in to participate. In the case of Fiona Hall's constructions, it is not until we look into the peepholes and through successive layers that the illusion of deep space is evident.

Midway in the journey of our life I found myself in a dark wood, for the straight way was lost. Ah, how hard it is to tell what that wood was, wild, rugged, harsh; the very thought of it renews the fear! It is so bitter that death is hardly more so. But, to treat of the good that I found in it, I will tell of the other things I saw there.
(Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, 1321)

The opening lines to Dante's The Divine Comedy introduce the theme of a journey. It is a journey beyond the grave through Hell and Purgatory to Paradise. The twelve Polaroid photographs that make up Fiona Hall's Illustrations to Dante's Divine Comedy, 1988, also follow that journey; they illustrate aspects of Dante's fourteenth-century poem and progress through the cantos of Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso. Like Dante, Hall sees a reflection of this world in those three realms. In the afterlife, the souls have made their ultimate choice and therefore are destined to exist in Hell, Purgatory or Paradise. In this life, the choices between justice and injustice, order and disorder, are continually being made. In the opening two cantos of Inferno Dante is in a forest; 'it is dark and confusing and he has lost his path'. This is the introduction to Hell — literally, where the damned are destined to exist for eternity and, allegorically, the continuing plight of humankind which has become misguided and purposeless. Inferno, canto Xlll: The Forest of the Suicides has 'foliage not green, but of dark colour; the branches not wholesome but knotted and twisted.' Fiona Hall interprets the scene: she cuts and moulds discarded aluminium soft-drink cans to form menacing vegetation, human figures, dogs and harpies which she then photographs against elaborate settings of found materials. She also paints and burnishes surfaces which, when translated into the shallow space and grey-green colours of the Polaroid photographs, have an ambiguous spatial effect — like grisaille in which monochromatic, painted scenes give the illusion of sculpted relief. Both Hall's and Dante's versions communicate elements of contemporary experience: Dante through his use of vernacular Italian language and Hall in her choice of commonplace, mass-produced materials.

The inspiration for Words, 1989, is linguistic. Male and female human figures, posing in the form of individual capital letters, have been shaped from aluminium metal drink cans and photographed in the configuration of words and visual/linguistic puns. Hall has not produced a codified alphabet as such; instead the letters refer distinctly to each word portrayed. For example, Bridge/Bride includes a female figure which lies horizontally across pylons formed from the two words that make up the title. In many of the Polaroid photographs, such as Words and Void, it is impossible to see both letter and human form simultaneously. Letters and figures slide into one another like the game of illusion which depicts the duck and the rabbit together in the same form: the subject is at once veiled and revealed. Hall's interest in playing off opposing elements is encapsulated in these photographs. Her manipulation of the metal and the warm tones of the Polaroids render the discarded aluminium drink cans unrecognisable and transform them into precious objects. Mass-produced articles and the photographic process, both emblematic of modernity, join to produce images that are reminiscent of reliefs on ancient coins or classical architectural friezes.

'The route you take lies parallel to the words along these walls you slide along in search of that which might be said each step assured or bored or trembling to discover finally only that one foot has followed the other'. Following Words, 1990, is like walking through a maze in which the destination exists solely for the sake of the labyrinthine route. It is a long, meandering sentence in which words are spelled out by human figures made from aluminium metal. The forms and the text are inseparable. And the surroundings, in turn, merge and dissolve into the shiny mirror-like surfaces. As we follow the words, meaning accrues and there is the expectation of enlightenment. 'The viewer … upon reaching the conclusion is left only with the much bigger riddle of making sense of the world we inhabit, and of gaining some comprehension of our place within it. This work was inspired by Zen koan which poses a seemingly innocent question pointing to a way of understanding that seems particularly relevant in our modern high-tech, sophisticated but troubled world.' (Fiona Hall, in Sally Couacoud's Second Nature, catalogue, Sydney & Tokyo, 1991 .)

In Paradisus Terrestris, 1989-90, the Garden of Eden is represented as a botanical garden where nature is classified, arranged and labelled. Hall's title is based on John Parkinson's florilegium, Paradisus in Sole. Paradisus Terrestris, 1629. Regarded as the first comprehensive British gardening book, it describes a thousand plants 'with the right ordering. planting and preferring of them, and their uses and virtues'. The framework of Hall's earthly paradise is a series of sardine tins transformed into elaborate sculptures. Lush plants are cut from the metal of the sardine tins to represent the physical aspect of the garden. The leaves and branches, like fine silver filigree, are botanically accurate and are comprised of entwined or espaliered boughs, foliage, fruit and pods. In this garden each plant is identified by its botanical name and compiled into an encyclopaedic collection of common and rare species. But the tins are also keyholes into which we have to peer to catch glimpses of interlocked human forms inside. The temptation in the Garden of Eden, discernible here as intricately formed sexual organs, hands and breasts, corresponds to the sensuous attributes of the plants above.

The conflict of the Gulf War in 1991 seemed remote. It was distanced from our region and the advanced technology employed for the combat and electronic images of shadowy shapes and diagrams transmitted from the battle zone reinforced the sense of unreality. During that summer, as if to counteract the technological onslaught, Fiona Hall hand-built a ceramic colander, platter and urn as she watched and listened to the media reports. A New World Order, Desert Storm and Salix Babylonica are functional, substantial and imposing objects. Their irregular proportions and glossy, unrefined glazes animate them. Aspects even appear bestial — for example the colander's legs, with clawing feet, which bend to support the weight of its belly. On, or incised into, the surface of each piece, is text —in the colander it constitutes the holes of the utensil. The text and the titles of the works are pertinent to the region of the Gulf and perhaps the location of the Garden of Eden. They bring together biblical texts and terminology that was popularised during the media coverage of the conflict.

Historia Naturalis, (1st century A.D.) by Pliny the Elder was possibly the first complete encyclopaedia of facts and myths pertaining to humankind and our surroundings. It is an inquiry into the nature of things and a guide for their use and appreciation. It develops the theme of humankinds abuse of nature, challenging any notion that disharmony between human lifestyles and the equilibrium of our environment is a repercussion of technological progress relevant only to recent times: 'We search for gems and certain very small stones by sinking shafts into the depths. We drag out Earth's entrails, we seek a jewel to wear on a finger. How many hands are worn by tool so that one knuckle must shine!' Fiona Hall's most recent series of Polaroid photographs, Historie Non-naturalis, 1991, ascribe to Pliny's ecological standpoint. The images illustrate his writings on astronomy, geography, the value of plants, human ailments and gems, and through the inclusion of disposable, manufactured elements, highlight an ethical stance. As with most of Fiona Hall's work, these photographs also embrace positive perspectives. Book XVII: Cultivated Trees, for example, includes the text 'A woman attempts to wake up the earth' which refers to Pliny's statement that: As a protection against caterpillars, they say that a woman just beginning her monthly courses should walk around each tree with bare feet and her girdle undone' Hall has cut and shaped metal to form cacti which represent the plant her own fertility, is shown as restoring the earth's fecundity and its plants, with abundant fruit and foliage, in the path of where she has been.

Fiona Hall is best known as a photographer, but as this exhibition demonstrates she is the mistress of many media. Born in Sydney in 1953, she first trained as a painter. Since the late 1970s she has concentrated on photography. Her sumptuous large black-and-white photographs have been widely exhibited; her more recent Polaroid photographs of the intricate assemblages she constructs in her studio have also received much attention. She has lived in Adelaide for many years, working as a teacher and an artist.

Garden of Earthly Delights is a tight and coherent selection of her work. As well as photographs, there are two delightful series of sculptures cut out of aluminium and tin, and — surprisingly — three ceramic objects: a plate, an urn and a colander. These are handbuilt earthenware pieces, satisfying in their solidity and chunkiness. Their roughness is effective, the handwork made evident in the shapes as well as in the different styles of handwriting incised into their surfaces. These are not simply decorative or practical objects. The titles belie their original significance. A New World Order, Salix Babylonica and Desert Storm were all made in 1991, during the Gulf war.

The holes in the colander are like bullet holes that spell out the codename of the allied assault on the Iraqis. The body of the urn Salix Babylonica is white rent with a blood-red glaze. The large plate declaring the new world order is sombre with its swirling stormy black glaze. Through their large scale and emphatic three-dimensionality the ceramics add another welcome dimension to her artistic practice.

The Canberra Times, 23 Jan 1998

Further information about this exhibition can be publicly accessed at the National Library of Australia, or available to researchers at the National Gallery's Library and Archives.