Fiona Margaret Hall

Fiona Margaret Hall, AO (born 16 November 1953) is an Australian artistic photographer and sculptor. Hall represented Australia in the 56th International Art Exhibition at the Venice Biennale in 2015. and telephone technician William Holman Hall in 1953 and grew up in Oatley, Sydney. Hall's family lived close to Royal National Park and her parents often took her bushwalking on the weekends, encouraging an appreciation of nature that has had a strong influence on her art. She is the younger sister of the mathematical statistician and probabilist Peter Gavin Hall.

Hall attended Oatley West Primary School between 1959 and 1965, and Penshurst High School between 1966 and 1971. Hall's mother recognised her artistic potential and took 14-year-old Hall to see the exhibition Two Decades of American Painting at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, which developed her interest in art. Hall was initially interested in studying architecture, Through participation in the experimental art scene of early 1970s Sydney, where the conventions of modern art were being challenged through the exploration of art forms outside of painting and sculpture, Hall became interested in photography. The ESTC did not offer a major in photography at that time, but her painting teacher John Firth-Smith mentored Hall in photography and she studied it under George Schwarz as a minor for her diploma. Also in 1981, five photographs by Fiona Hall were acquired by the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the first of her works to enter a public collection.

1990s Between June and October 1991, Hall was Artist in Residence at Philip Institute of Technology in Preston, Victoria. In the late 1990s, Hall stopped working in the medium of photography, and the photograph of her father, incorporated into her 1996 large-scale installation Give a Dog a Bone, was the last that she exhibited.

In preparation for the Sydney Olympic Games, Hall was commissioned to produce a work, Bloodline, as part The Sydney 2000 Olympic Fine Art Collection at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

2000s In 2000, Hall was commissioned to create a public artwork in the Royal Botanic Gardens in Sydney and designed Folly for Mrs Macquarie.

In 2005, retrospectives of her work were held at the Queensland Art Gallery and the Art Gallery of South Australia. To coincide with this, the first monograph was published, Fiona Hall, by Piper Press and written by curator Julie Ewington. In the same year, Hall was commissioned to create a piece for the new Chancellery Building of the University of South Australia. In 2008–2009, another retrospective, entitled Force Field, was displayed in Sydney, New South Wales, at the Museum of Contemporary Art, and in New Zealand at the City Gallery, Wellington, and the Christchurch Art Gallery.

2010s In 2015, Hall represented Australia in the 56th International Art Exhibition at the Venice Biennale, with a work entitled Wrong Way Time. This included work created in collaboration with the Tjanpi Desert Weavers, Kuka Irititja (Animals from Another Time) and Tjituru-tjituru (Tragedy, Grief and Sadness), focused on death, extinction and annihilation. The following year, Wrong Way Time was exhibited at the National Gallery of Australia. Hall continues to work with Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery in Sydney, where she has exhibited since 1995.

Wrong Way Time was published by Piper Press in 2015, and in 2019, Hall was commissioned to produce a work for The Hall of Service, Anzac Memorial in Sydney.

Recognition and awards 1997: Contempora 5 Art Award, National Gallery of Australia. 1998: Appointed to the Advisory Council of the Australian National University's Centre for the Mind. 1999: Clemenger Art Award, National Gallery of Victoria. 2011: Artist Award in the National Awards for the Visual Arts, Melbourne Art Foundation. 2013: Officer (AO) in the general division of the Order Of Australia "for distinguished service to the visual arts as a painter, sculptor and photographer, and to art education".

Reviews Famed art curator Betty Churcher AO said of Hall: "With infinite care, the patience of a scientist and the skill of a jeweller, she fashioned each plant and its corresponding human part. Her purpose is very serious but her sense of humour is always ready to bubble to the surface."

Notable works The Antipodean Suite, 1981 Genesis, 1984 The Syntax of Flowers, 1992 (series) Fly Away Home, 2010-2012 Fall Prey, 2012 Wrong Way Time, 2015 Piper Press 1997 - Fiona Hall : Canberra projects 2005 - Fiona Hall (Monograph), Piper Press 2007 - Fiona Hall : force field 2015 - Wrong Way Time, Piper Press