Fiona Tan: Sydney

by Fiona Tan

Invited by the Biennale of Sydney 2006, Fiona Tan has selected images from private photo albums from approximately ninety inhabitants of Sydney, and created a wall installation of photographs exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, together with this publication, VOX POPULI, Sydney – the second book by Fiona Tan in a series that present us with a ‘snapshot’ of a country or a community through photographs collected from personal and private family albums.Tan's interest in the ‘vox populi’ expands her longstanding interest in the documentary tradition, in its most egalitarian form. The photographs – loosely arranged within three familiar strains, Portrait, Home and Nature – capture private if everyday the birth of a child, birthdays, family gatherings, adolescence, holidays, brothers and sisters, first loves, and favourite places. Whilst recognisable landmarks give clues to the origin of the photographs and the Caucasian, Aboriginal, Asian and Indian subjects all reveal some of the diversity of contemporary Australian life; the photographs capture moments and events that are interchangeable in terms of country or origin. The reader is drawn into a seductive and popular ethnography where images of the private and intimate evoke feelings of empathy and nostalgia, identification and humour that challenge the ideology of official national portraits.

125 pages, Paperback

First published October 30, 2006

About the author

Fiona Tan is a visual artist and filmmaker. She is best known for her skilfully crafted video and film installations, in which explorations of memory, identity and the role of visual images are key. Her installations and photographic works have been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions in international venues. She has written and directed to date three feature length films.

Recent solo exhibitions took place at Eye Filmmuseum, Amsterdam, Museum der Moderne Salzburg and Kunsthalle Krems, Austria, Museum Ludwig Cologne, Museum für Modern Kunst, Frankfurt, Mudam, Luxembourg, Nasjonalmuseet Oslo, The BALTIC, Gateshead, UK, MAXXI, Rome and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. With her solo presentation Disorient, Tan represented The Netherlands at the 53rd Venice Biennale in 2009. Her work has been shown at various international group shows including in the São Paulo Biennial, Venice Architecture Biennale, Documenta IX, Istanbul Biennale. Her work is represented in numerous international public and private collections including the Tate Modern, London, the Guggenheim Museum New York, the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, the Neue National Galerie, Berlin and the MCA, Chicago.

Reviews

[Michele · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's a photo album, a people's photographic representation of self.
I praise the idea, but the result, ça va sans dire, it's beyond Fiona Tan's photographic art. In fact she's an artist, not a photographer.
Some photos are touching, others are plain documental. Editing could have been better ... but that depends on the contributed material, doesn't it?!

[Sarah Ahmed · Rating 4 out of 5]

this book: the moments after it stops raining.