Flesh events: ‘Human’ furniture makes for a disturbing body of work

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Human furniture

“The house and the body are palimpsests of life events with their history inscribed into every surface,” writes Fiona Roberts in her artist’s statement describing her sculptural body furniture Intimate Vestiges. “They are repositories of treasured moments, of everyday routines and memories, of growing up or growing old, of accidents, of habits, and of fear and trauma.”

For Intimate Vestiges, Roberts created a room filled with ceramic, mixed media, cloth, and paper artworks featuring body parts (lips, eyes, fingers) artfully crafted into everyday artifacts. A hairbrush with a long mane of hair. A chair studded with glittering glass eyes. A carpet is a wrestle of fingers while pillows prepare to kiss.

…the challenges we face by inhabiting a body that is constantly changing, decaying and regenerating, as well as the fragility and limitations that are intrinsic to all living organisms,” the artist says. “Within this, I explore the dysfunctional relationship between the mind and body, and in particular, the mind’s discordant perception of the body, which includes concepts of dislocation, emotional projection, fluctuating perceptions, fears, phobias and paranoia. Thus, with the body set as a canvas for trauma, my work becomes a series of flesh events that are visceral, tactile and faintly haunting.

Since graduating in visual art at the Adelaide Central School of Art, Australian artist Roberts has been exhibiting her artwork across Australia, Belgium, and England.
In 2004, she won the Peoples Choice Award, Exit Art, at the Northern Territorian Museum and Art Gallery, the firts of a series of awards and grants that she has won over the past decade. The following selection comes from Roberts’ artworks Intimate Vestiges and The Beginning of the End. See more of Roberts work here.