Fiona Stevenson is one of the hundreds of people who poured into the Tate Modern this summer to help create a massive new work with Turner Prize winning artist Oscar Murillo.
Fiona, whose work has been exhibited in London, New York and Manchester, was determined to take part in the collaborative artwork – not least because some of her own paintings are in a similar style to the Columbian painter.
“In some of Fiona’s works she puts words on canvas and then paints over them, just like he does,” said her mother Mari Stevenson. “In fact, her diptych Talk Talk has received a lot of interest.”
The six-week-long event, The Flooded Garden, saw the Tate Modern invite visitors to the Turbine Hall to put their own mark on a vast oval-shaped installation inspired by Claude Monet’s famous Water Lilies, painted while he was going blind.
Murillo draws similarities between this loss of sight and the way people can be ‘socially blind’ and fail to truly understand each other, a concept he describes as ‘social cataracts.’
The shape and size of the installation, which contains 500 sq m of raw canvas on two five-metre tall curved scaffolds, echoes the two specially designed oval galleries in the orangerie in Paris, in which Monet hung eight of the water lily works depicting his garden at Giverny as a memorial to those who died in the first world war.
Contributors were given a selection of paints in blues, yellows and pinks to add their own interpretations of the impressionist’s work to the enormous curved structure, which had been emblazoned with hand drawn messages and doodles by previous visitors to the Tate Modern.
Fiona used three shades of blue to add her own touch to the work which, now completed, will remain on display at the Turbine Hall for the time being.
After adding her contribution, Fiona explored other areas of the gallery, and was particularly mesmerised by Kandinsky’s work.
For more information and photography please contact Fiona Stevenson’s press officer, Helen Lambell, at Splash PR on 07969 253147.