Fiona makes free standing ceramic and crystocal plinth assemblages. These go under the name The Angel’s Share, an industry term for the portion of whisky lost in evaporation in the cask barrel. Here however, the phrase is a metaphor for the poetics of the temporal soul. Fiona's work is innovative in the way it distils and reassembles architecture, painting and decorative art to this end. Thus the composition, colour and rhythm of the 3 dimensional assemblages are informed by early Italian Renaissance architecture and painting; namely Giotto di Bondone’s (d.1337), Scrovegni Chapel frescoes, (1303 - 1305) in Padua, Italy and Duccio di Buoninsegna’s (d.1319), Maesta,(1308 - 1311) commissioned by Siena Cathedral.
At the same time the Fiona's material process engages with modernism’s formalist legacy through the deconstruction of narrative into discrete components; visible process (press moulded clay, mono printing, collagraphy), the repetition of minimalist rectangles and colour, repetition also being integral to ceramic process. The slip cast interior of a Duchess amber ware teacup and textures adapted from embossed wall paper make allusion to design history, as does the juxtaposition of press moulded and slip cast ceramic. The viewer's origining imagination inhabits and reinvents the forms and processes, locating the angel’s share, within themselves. Work can be commissioned and bought from the studio or from exhibitions, such as the Scotland: Craft and Design pavillion, London Design Fair 2017.
Fiona uses both White St Thomas 150-1106 and Grogged White 158-4120 in her work.
www.fionabyrnesutton.co.uk
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