Art by Fiona Sant, Sculpture, Drawing, Mxed media

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linksaboutThrough working in 3 dimensions, certain every-day objects have revealed themselves to be intrinsically eloquent, able to express an inexhaustible array of situations, ideas and emotions. Through familiarity gained from repeated experiments in a variety of media, I think the dress is such an object. Unnervingly responsive, a simply-cut girl's dress seems eager to communicate on any level asked of it. While immediate pleasure can be had from allowing the eye to freely roam the reassuring folds, hollows and gathers, an empty dress, frozen in fibreglass and time, can simultaneously express both the concept of personal identity and the ensuing emotion following the sudden loss of it. The static dress records the moment of fissure (the fibreglass has ice-like cracks, the remains of a previous life are pushed out) while the empty space within the dress howls with some kind of longing to repair the break. Whilst contemplating a total absence of body, all I can see is body. A hollow white cotton dress stands unadorned, defiant, and talks of abandonment, the attempted corruption of innocence (failed), the deep-cut disappointments of childhood, the gleeful triumph of spirit over bondage, vanity, and most excitingly of all, again, the immediate and irrefutable invokation of a physical presence. Like a shape-shifter, an empty dress of natural latex mutates and adapts easily. Behaving as a conduit between the inner and outer self, the skin becomes clothing, the body becomes its own armour. Quite like watercolour, quite like newly-dead skin, the unsettling quality of the medium only seems to speak of missing bodies when manipulated into tiny smocks. An empty dress can signify the start and end of life - the christening gown, the death shroud - and all stages in-between. I plan to carry on refining my understanding of the language of dresses and keep up the search for the as-yet unfound limitations, as where these lie, another body of work, another new language is waiting to respond.back to dressesPage 0Master Page 31circus boxPage 1Page 2boxesPage 4Page 5Page 6Page 7Page 8Page 10Page 11Master Page 30Page 12Page 13Page 14Page 15Page 16Page 17Page 18Page 19Page 20Page 21Page 22Page 23Page 24Page 25Page 26Page 27Page 30Page 28Page 31