Analysis Of Fiona Halls 'Understory'

Artists often communicate their ideas and visions through their artwork. They reflect this through their beliefs and their way of seeing the world. As seen in Julie Rraps ‘overstepping’, she portrays a strong message based on a social comment through the way she sees the 20th century society. In a totally different form performing artist, Lee Wen, expresses his views and ethics a through his mixed-media, installation, performances and paintings. Another example of this is through Fiona Halls ‘Understory’. ‘Understorey’ is a high-spirited yet shocking display of the inter-relationships of life and death. The two views of the tropical environment work together and create a contrast that is so appealing to the eye. The eighteenth and nineteenth

Wen tells the story on how to be true to yourself and this relates to breaking through your shell that the society is holding you back from. He acts out the motion of how to come forward and show the world who the true self is. Fiona Hall, however, through her precisely delicate hand crafting, portrays beautiful bead work and use of colours, she is able to create any combination of shape and colour. In ‘Understory’ Hall creates a military camouflage colour with the beads, this is done so that the message she is showing is clear and can be read more easily. The sculptures placed above show the brightness of life before conflict. The beads shine brighter because they are placed closer to the lights and not shaded apon by other sculptures. This is done to replicate the brightness and happiness of flowers and plants above and portrays the sadness and disappointment of war. Julie Rrap’s ‘overstepping’ show significant relation to the society, the digital techniques that she has used create a modernized look on how using photo shop is a new and revolutionized way on portaying art. However, this is also how the society is becoming, the media has a strong influence and people can be pushed

The current of woman continually wearing types of shoes to show femininity was notable for Rrap. She was living in Sydney, Australia where she had been inspired to create this piece. She was asked to photograph numerous fashion shows therefore was constantly seeing women in high heels. Wen however, nearly a decade earlier was in the city of London when he began the ‘journey of the yellow man’. Wen was also influenced to created this about how the society is moving around him. Living in the city of London, you are bombarded by people and urbanisation happening around you it is hard not to get caved in by it all. Fiona Hall started creating ‘understorey’ after a she lived at a little house in Lanuganga surrounded by tropical lakes and gardens of Siri Lanka. At this time Siri Lanka was distraught by civil war and Hall was forced to travel around the country. She was able to see ‘the under current of conflict at high visibility’ – Hall. She was frequently stopped at military checkpoints, which featured army shelters covered in camouflage paint patterns, the variation of which caught her