Fiona Banner aka The Vanity Press
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In this exhibition Fiona Banner aka The Vanity Press continues to explore language, conflict and gender through a range of media, including drawing, sculpture and the moving image. Here Banner considers the possibilities and meanings embodied in the word ‘Disarm’, most notably in recent films where nature and landscape collide with the contradictory realities of destruction, naivety and hope.
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'The jets perform a desire for peace rather than conflict and in doing so signal their own demise'
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DISARM (landscape), 2024
DISARM (landscape) (2024), captures the absurdity of military flypasts which Banner describes as ‘a raw moment of extreme weather; a violent murmuration.’ This flypast manifests an instant in which language meets its limits – subverting the macho message of military power, as the planes in formation race across an immense cloudscape spelling out the word DISARM. These jets perform a desire for peace rather than conflict and in doing so signal their own demise, transforming a jingoistic display of military might into a call for global disarmament.
In contrast to the scale and hubris of the flypast itself, Banner’s image seems low-key, contradicting the technological precision of the event. The action happens amongst the birds, the sky ... the banality of an undistinguished landscape ... the sound coming first, waiting for the planes to erupt into the frame. The aircraft within the formation are different and from non-allied countries that would therefore otherwise never be seen flying together. Banner notes that the planes are named after forces of nature ‘so it speaks of our assault on the planet as well as each other.’ D: Flying Leopard, I: Typhoon, S: Flanker, A: Falcon, R: Golden Eagle, M: Lightning. Banner explains:
'A few times a year a flypast goes right over my studio. It’s weirdly exciting it is such a brief moment... of extreme weather, of obscene ego and nationalist folly, yes, but it also hits you viscerally, something about the planes high in the sky performing like that is emotional, frightening... possibly beautiful... at the same time establishing conflict as always somewhere else…'
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Photography: Ben Westoby / Fine Art Documentation
DISARM (portrait) was originally commissioned by Chester Contemporary and shown in an abandoned Topshop in Chester in 2023.
DISARM (landscape) was originally commissioned by CIRCA. First screened on Piccadilly Lights, London as part of the CIRCA 20:24 programme in 2024.
