Burned Object Memory

Burned Object Memory has evolved as part of Fiona’s response to the devastating bushfires that swept through Australia in 2019 and 2020. As Sydney was blanketed with smoke day after day, she decided to find a way to retrieve burned objects to use in her still life practice as a way of trying to process the devastation happening around her. Reaching out through her community Fiona made contact with new people who invited her to explore the charred remains of their homes, studios, barns and to retrieve objects damaged by fire. Those same people shared their stories with her. She then set to work to find ways to represent the objects and their story in her practice.
Fiona is now bringing those objects and her visual art practice to Art in Isolation. She will install her studio at 5 Eliza Street for two weeks and invites the public to come and see what she is doing. Visitors are encouraged to remember and share their own experiences of the bushfires. Stories told will be added to Fiona’s collection and channelled into her work which is about the power of objects to help us remember the experiences that have shaped us.

Fiona Henderson

Fiona is a visual artist living and working in Sydney’s inner west. The primary focus of her visual practice is still life images. Her work revolves around themes as diverse as melancholia, trauma, nostalgia, memory and beauty as well as reflecting formal concerns appropriate to her mediums. Having taken photographs all her life, Fiona has also been painting for over twenty years. She now moves between the two media as required by her work and subject matter. Fiona is presently working for her Doctor of Fine Art at the National Art School in Darlinghurst.