At first glance, The New Gallery’s current exhibition, The Wilderness, is a pallid array of delicate elegance and beauty. Across the space, pedestals covered with white tablecloths and dressed with elegant doilies host a collection of elaborately adorned white fondant cakes detailed with royal icing. Vertical cakes are also mounted along the white walls of the gallery. Hamilton artist Fiona Kinsella’s cakes, however, are not typical of occasions that would customarily call for such extravagance. The initial impression of gentle femininity holds true only until closer examination, and while Kinsella’s works remain truly elegant and beautiful, the details and objects adorning her cakes reveal their raw, wild and often grotesque nature.
Each of the cakes lies on a carpet of hair, behind glass casings. The materials specify “hair of a man, hair of a woman or hair of a child,” hair that has been gathered and collected. You’ll then notice teeth and insects and even glass eyes patterned along the cakes, crudely and intrusively violating their sublimity. By juxtaposing an elegant purity with objects that generally trigger repulsion, Kinsella is able to jostle the viewer into reacting physically and emotionally. The Wilderness refers more to a psychological geography than a physical one, and though the underlying concepts are an important part of the pieces, Kinsella’s work is largely material-driven. “Each series I’ve developed has originated from an organic experimentation with particular materials,” says Kinsella. These materials include bones, porcupine quills, skin, hair, bone, claws, dust, hatpins, perfume bottles, fingerprints, bird spittle, icons, broken glass, dental tools and bullets. Other abstract items include sleep, tears, melancholy and abundance, also listed beside the cakes — ingredients that suggest ritual and process, as well as reference and symbolism.
Kinsella’s work is so intricately woven with religious, spiritual and socio-historical contexts that even she finds it difficult to summarize. This concept of the wilderness is limitless, and Kinsella is just as interested in how others may understand and interpret her work. “My hope is that the title (of the show) is broad enough to carry several interpretations,” she says, be it a psychological, spiritual or a literal wilderness.
The first pieces encountered when entering the gallery are (cake) protector I and (cake) protector II. These cakes are especially eye-catching (pun intended) as Kinsella has placed several glass eyes on the side of the cakes. With details as lifelike as the red veins painted along the vitreous of the eye, and eyelids folded into the fondant icing, these spectral glass eyes don’t merely protrude — they stare and examine. Title and image bring religious associations to mind, as in the “eye of the beholder” that proclaims God as a watcher and protector of all.
“This series is not necessarily about religion, but uses references to religious relics, the lives of Saints and the ephemeral as a vehicle to initiate a dialogue about The Wilderness,” says Kinsella. The Incorruptible cakes do not subtly indicate association with religious ideas, but boldly express them. Incorruptibility is defined as the property of a body — usually human — that does not decompose after death, thus considered being under divine protection. These pieces are sombre displays of several coffin-like pieces featuring small miniature figures both atop the cakes and within. These types of religious relics have been the focus of countless journeys for believers to behold and affirm their faith, just as much of Kinsella’s work has been inspired by personal journeys or pilgrimages.
Kinsella converges the onset of powerful convictions by provocatively evoking and symbolically portraying them in The Wilderness. Incorruptibility, the nature of the materials, the spirit and religion are all notions of self-preservation. The bones, moths (wings), cakes and teeth, saints and sentiments are safeguarded behind a glass barrier and atop sugar coatings. The Wilderness, however, does not lie dormant and is certainly not preserved.
Post the first comment: (Login or Register)