Siri Hayes: Fox Trot
Nature in the Dark 1
- View Siri Hayes' Biography
Siri Hayes is a visual artist based in Melbourne.
Fox Trot
Upon seeing stills from the study of fauna affected by fire there was an immediate and obvious potential to create an animation. The jagged movements of the stills cut together to make a moving image work lent itself well to music full of rhythm. There is rawness in the original documentation of these wild animals that the artists did not want to change. There was also a surreal potential to anthropomorphise these wild animals and create a lovely ballroom dance with them. To create a narrative between these wild animals through dance tapped into a childhood want to personify and get to know them. In Fox Trot a fox literally dances in a light-footed and graceful manner. There is also the hypnotic and sinister element a fox’s movement that draws in its prey. A cat and then other native birds and animals can’t help but join in the fox’s spellbinding trot. In her practice Siri generally uses photography and is drawn to landscapes that have been ecologically affected by human activity. In this particular work the opportunity to work with such intriguing pre-existing material was irresistible.
Siri Hayes has exhibited widely since the early 2000’s. Significant group shows include Melbourne Now, Negotiating this world: Contemporary Australian Art and Stormy weather: contemporary Australian landscape photography all three at the National Gallery of Victoria, Contemporary Australian Portraiture at the National Portrait Gallery, Future Primitive at Heide Museum of Modern Art, International Festival of Photography, Lodz Art Center, Poland and Tickle attack - Backlight Trienniale – Exhibition Centre Tri, Finland. Recent solo exhibitions include Back to Nature Scene at Heide Museum of Modern art, All you knit is love at the Centre for Contemporary Photography and Aquatic listening at GRANTPIRRIE. She has won the Olive Cotton Award for Photographic Portraiture, received an Australia Council Barcelona residency grant amongst others. She has work in many public collections such as the National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Victoria, Art Bank, and Australian Parliament House.
