Fiona Hingston

Small, handheld objects, sizes variable.

Work in progress

Hay and cob mixture, 2022

2023

Hay, jute thread. Sizes variable, approx 90 x 90

One thing feeds into another.

After making The Englishwoman’s Flora I turned my lawn into a mini meadow. It has flourished for three years and I now have my own hay to cut and use.

and Cushion.

Hay

Sleeping Bag H 150 x 100 x 45cm Cushion 75 x 75cm x 12cm

2021

Joyce was one of many who have died of Corona virus. She was my friend and neighbour for forty years. In July I started making something with hay from her field. It seemed important to keep methods simple - just twist the grass.

I made her a sleeping bag.

Both ends open so she could slip gently through.

2019/2022

Objects constructed from stitched hay and cob. A labour intensive construction. Damp hay is rolled into lengths, stitched, looped, then cut.

Altered Book. 2021/22

Photographic plates, wax and graphite

Like many people lucky to have a garden, I spent a lot of time in mine during lockdown. Running out of garden to cultivate I decided to re plant Gertrude Jekyll’s at Munstead Wood, as illustrated in her book Home and Garden, with plants tolerant to increasingly hot summers.

200 Flowers

2019

Masking tape, wire, graphite, approx 10 x 8 x 5cm each flower.

In 1962 Rachel Carson published Silent Spring, a book that foretold the destruction of flora and fauna by the indiscriminate use of herbicides and pesticides. Two years later in 1964, I was presented at a school prize giving with a copy of The Observer Book of Wild Flowers - the inscription states it was ‘awarded for excellent progress’. The irony of this was not lost on me when I recently opened the book and realised I can no longer find many of the flowers illustrated there.

Progress at what cost? 97% of British wild flower meadows have now disappeared.

Deciding that if I couldn’t find them I would get to know each of the 200 flowers in the book by making them. My hope is that with our increasing awareness of this devastating loss and subsequent effects on biodiversity, these ghost flowers just might have the chance to flourish again.

Installation views at Black Swan Gallery Frome 2019 & Hestercombe Gallery 2020

The English Woman’s Flora is an exquisitely conceived and realised new work by Fiona Hingston. The exhibition recreates in delicate miniature all 200 flowers detailed in The Observer’s Book of Wild Flowers.

Beautifully installed and lit, it is an extraordinary labour of love.

A timely, important art project which touches on: loss, progress, the environment, Britain’s so called ‘natives’ (so many of these plants aren’t actually indigenous but have moved fluidly across borders of all kinds,) the spectral presences that increasingly haunt our countryside, fragility and resilience, attention and care. Brilliant work, thank you.

David Williams – visitor to The Black Swan Gallery, Frome, Som

Leaves, archival boxes, table.

Petiole from the Latin petiolus, or peciolus ‘little foot’ - the stalk that joins a leaf to a stem.

2018

At the end of the no through road in my village there is a gate. When we came to live here over thirty years ago we walked to the end of the village not knowing how or where the road ended. We found the gate and I was transfixed by the sudden change from village to woodland. I’ve walked these woods almost daily. I think I know them but there is always something new to be seen, heard, smelt and experienced. One year it was noticing leaves and how they are attached to branches. I’d been drawn to the stalks on brown ivy leaves that lay on the woodland floor. I gathered other leaves to study and in doing so learnt the names of trees in Biddlecombe wood. The joy now is finding a tree I don’t recognise, identifying it with the growing understanding that any change or disturbance in the wood invites new species to colonise.

Biddlecombe trees. Alder Alnus glutinosa Beech Fagus sylvatica Ash Fraxinus excelsior Blackthorn Prunus spinosa Wych Elm Ulmus glabra Hawthorn Crataegus monogyna Hazel Corylus avellana Holly Ilex aquifolium Field Maple Acer campestre Predunclate Oak Quercus robur Black Poplar Populus nigra Spindle tree Euonymus europaeus Horse chesnut Aesculus hippocastanum Sweet Chesnut Castanea sativa Sycamore Acer pseudoplatanus Larch Larix decidua Grey Sallow Salix cinerea Small Leaf Lime Tilia cordata Downy Birch Betula pubescens Crab Apple Malus sylvestris

2018/19

Card, dowel, gesso, graphite and pastel. each approx 30 x 8 cm

Small objects with movable parts developed from studying equipment in a milking parlour.

Series of drawings of disused miking parlour.

Charcoal and pastel on Bristol Board.

There is no longer a working farm in the village. The herd was sold, buildings left derelict and surrounding land contracted out for sheep grazing and silage. Walking round the empty site I came across what was once a state of the art, herringbone milking parlour. Clusters, vacuum lines and debris littered the floor, a film of grey dust covered glass collection jars.

After last cow had been milked, the parlour was abandoned and equipment left in disarray on the pit floor. It’s still all there, illuminated by shafts of white light as the roof slowly collapses.

Images 1-3 Biddlecombe Triptych 2014

Earth, charcoal on prepared tissue paper mounted on board. 90 x 90 cm

Images 4-6 Top Path, Biddlecombe 2015

Earth, charcoal, coloured pencil on paper . 50 x 70cm

2014

Series of four drawings following plough lines at the edge of a field.

Earth, graphite on paper 50 x 70 cm.

Series of drawings made in response to walking a deeply ploughed field and the visceral feeling of being ‘held’ by wet earth.

Increased scale contributes to a dense pictorial surface with the residue earth (left after scraping,) leaving a monochrome surface that is devoid of movement or indication as to the time of day. This creates an ambiguous topography that alludes both a macro or microscopic space.

2008

Earth ink on paper. 120 x 120 cm

A ploughed field once was a signifier of changing seasons, a rotation of pasture land for the herd or the sowing of crops. As I walked these fields, along deep furrows – I was held, grounded in weight and wetness, the smell of minerals released by the plough, filling the air. One particular area smelt of blood.

Change takes place incrementally in a constant cycle of renewal and decay. Drawing is a way of holding on to these small changes, of becoming sentient whilst describing the intricacies and mystery found in fields and along pathways. Drawings are made on paper prepared with a wash of mud, covered with charcoal/ink/graphite and sealed. This textured surface is central to the work. Scraping back, with a knife blade and improvised tools, constantly refining the subject and exposing stains and imperfections over what can be long periods of time, embeds an image both in the paper and in my mind. The distance between lived experience and drawing is held within the medium.

All drawings are made in the studio. Surface is prepared with various combinations that include –

Earth Ash White emulsion paint/gesso Graphite Charcoal Indian ink

Drawings are made by erasing a surface using a variety of tools.

I use a mixture of papers of various weights depending on the subject matter. The same goes with the surface preparation. It took me a while to appreciate that one surface mixture will not do for every drawing, so there is often a lot of experimentation before the surface feels right.

This is the most frustrating time, trying to make the connection between surface and subject. I no longer destroy work I felt wasn’t working. Learning to hang on to them, drawings will hang around for months, years and then be reworked.

I’m constantly finding new tools to work with, like the adapted craft drill used as an eraser and lengths of willow stick with wire wool attached at the end used for scraping. Colour is added occasionally with coloured pencil.

There is a conflict in my methodology, I’m excavating a surface to reveal an image, while all the time wanting to embed that image deep into the fibres of the paper.

"It is rare to find such integrity in current art, a work that grows out of the earth itself, to create an image for life itself. The pigments are made from local field soil, the image etched from a clod dug from the same field epitomising the cycle we ourselves go through over a lifetime - from fleshly clay back to clay- yet with the promise in the roots and seeds of a further revival. The technique is as spare as the symbolism, a scraping back through layers to reveal an image as tangible as the original, hanging in space as a potent reminder of our essential nature. 'Adam' meant clay, and 'Eve' or 'Howa' meant sky. We too are still a marriage of Earth and Sky, spirit and clay. And the shaping spirit is still the mystery. Fiona's work captures this in her images and forms. Spirit is integral."

Pablo Foster

Earth, charcoal, varnish on gesso on cardboard boxes.

15 x 15 x 3 cm

2023

Drawings developed from the small hay sculptures of last year and influenced by engravings found in an old gardening manual and botanical textbooks that amplified the strangeness of flowers when looked at close up.

The boxes caught my eye when walking past a neighbour’s recycling box, liking the curved corners I started collecting them. Although always using whatever is close at hand in my work, it has become a conscious imperative to use as much recycled material as I can. These are Magnum ice cream lolly boxes.