Image-ness/Object-ness: a flattened encounter

Abstract

‘Homefront’ was commissioned by David Hastie (Director) and Gordon Dalton, project manager at LOCWS International in partnership with (Andrew Deathe) the National Waterfront Museum, Swansea. Fisher’s large-scale public artwork was realized after exploring material related specifically to the era of World War 1 such as propaganda posters, Dazzle/ pattern as camouflage, the lost generation, women in Wales through textiles/domestic interior and the War in Wales through the available archives across different museums across Wales (National Waterfront Museum, National Wool Museum and St Fagans National History Museum) to explore different facets of violence and war. Fisher develops a critical enquiry around notions of war, it's aftermath, disaster and gender stereotypes in relation to a continued exploration of the seductive power of media representations of violence and destruction. The work employs the architectural façade as a device to explore mediated narrative constructions and theatricality, the pictorial experience of sculpture is particularly important to this current inquiry and to the ways the work disrupts conventions. Pattern and craft techniques are investigated to complicate and subvert the artefact, challenging received ideas of masculinity and muddling ‘male’ and ‘female’ signifiers. LOCWS International specifically invited Fisher due to the nature of his continued exploration of the subversive potential of textile craft techniques in the fabrication of the installations/artifacts he makes. ‘Homefront’ was sited and exhibited at the National Waterfront Museum in April 2014, coinciding with LOCWS International's Art Across The City, 2014, which was their largest event to date (visited by 44,000 people,) with over 25 public artworks exhibited across Swansea.