Overview

Fiona Dean RSA is a Glasgow-born artist, currently living between Glasgow and Dumfries and Galloway. Her work often focuses on landscapes, in particular observations of nature and human interactions with it. From the form and patterns of fields and marshes to hills, ancient fortifications, ruins and found objects, her drawings and sculptures are visual notes of the land and its histories - real and imagined. Words are often ‘etched’ upon the objects and images she makes, playing with how written and visual language might interconnect to suggest narrative or memorial. Recent work has been informed by repeated, daily walks in Dumfries and Galloway’s Uplands and coastal Flows and In-lets, drawing and gathering found objects and fragments as both materials for making, as well as ways of presenting sculptural observations. Often worked in clay or wax, sculptures are transformed into cement, ceramic and bronze, intentionally enhancing traces of process in their drawn, coloured and waxed surfaces.

Works
Biography

Fiona Dean RSA studied Sculpture at Glasgow School of Art, and completed her PhD at the University of Stirling. She has received numerous awards for her work, including the RSA Guthrie Award and medal. As well as her studio practice, she has led on a number of creative research, curatorial and educational developments, including strategies such as Artpark Glasgow for House for an Art Lover (with Jim Harold), LEARN for Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art, and developing a recent pilot series of Co-curated exhibitions with East Dunbartonshire Culture and Leisure Trust, establishing collaborations between artists, communities and archives. Women's Histories is also a strong interest and Dean curated Women Peace Crusaders - a multi-layered exhibition, involving artists, volunteers, researchers, libraries and archives - in collaboration with Glasgow Women’s Library (GWL) and the University of Glasgow. Dean was also invited by Wigtown Book Festival to present her research on activist and suffragette Flora Murray, commissioned as a new print work by GWL for their 21 Revolutions exhibition and publication.

Exhibitions