Fiona McDonald
Biography
Mc Donald received a Bsc in Biological Chemistry from Coleraine University of Ulster before attending the National College of Art and Design where she received a BA in Fine Art in 1996. In 2001 she received an MA in Fine Art from the National College of Art and Design and an MSc in Multimedia Systems at Trinity College in 2006. Arts Council awards include New Work Award 2007. Received for a collaborative project with Nicholas Ward for project [e++].
She has also been awarded a project studio at Temple Bar Gallery & Studio from May 2009 to Sept 2010 . Between 2006 & 2009 she has given a series of non-toxic printmaking workshops at IADT Dún Laoghaire Institute of Art Design and Technology on the Visual Arts Practice course and worked as a part-time lecturer.
Statement
Her works can be seen as experimental or propositional spaces, whose boundaries are defined by the tensions between seeming opposites–positive/negative; order/chaos; visible/invisible. She constructs spaces or situations in which the laws and concepts of physics, chemical process and art are brought into play and combined to bring about evolving environments, which exist in constant states of flux and suspension.
She is interested in how a simple set of rules can generate ultimately complex self-generating and perpetuating systems and feedback loops. The accumulations and erosions of forms that are recorded on the electrolytic plates, pulsating magnetic fields of ferromagnetic dust or adulations of liquid in her works are suggestive of miniature landscapes, environments and ecosystems.
Her artworks comprise of bespoke experimental apparatus–which generate both physical and metaphorical outcomes. She is aiming to prompt viewers to meditate on the dynamics between art and science; man-made and ‘natural’ systems; the technological and the ‘alive’; experiment and knowledge; form and content.