WHEN The Creator Incubator arts hub opened its doors to the latest exhibition by Fiona Lee Saturday, it was not just a gallery but a place of memory and deep emotion.
For the exhibition features works sculpted from the ruins of the home and studio Lee lost in a bushfire in November 2019.
What's more, among those attending the official opening are fellow bushfire survivors and others affected by that dreadful summer of 2019-2020.
"I'm a little bit terrified of what will happen," said Fiona Lee, as she looked at the works in the Hamilton North gallery. "Obviously it's a highly emotional experience and exhibition for myself personally, but also for other people who have lost their houses and are coming, or have been impacted by fire.
"I really appreciate this is a space where collective grief and action can be held."
The exhibition, pointedly titled Carbon Tax, marks the end of Lee's 12-month residency at The Creator Incubator.
The artist was given a studio to work in after Braddon Snape, The Creator Incubator's founder and Lee's former sculpture lecturer at Newcastle Art School, saw television footage of his old student walking through the ruins of her family's home on the NSW Mid-North Coast.
As a result, the 34 artists working at the hub agreed to make room for one more, establishing The Creator Incubator Fire-Affected Artist Residency for six months. Then one of the occupants, sculptor Graham Wilson, donated another six-month residency. To rent the studio would have usually cost about $360 a month.
Having moved back to Newcastle with her partner and young daughter, Fiona Lee applied for the residency and was accepted.
"The best thing in the last 12 months has been just having the space and time to process the trauma and the experience and to find my voice through creative practice, and to have the support of all the artists in the Creator Incubator to do that," Lee said.
The residency has given her somewhere to work with the charred and burnt pieces of her past, and to create something from them.
"Turning the ash into something that has value, not necessarily in a financial sense, but in a creative and political way," Lee explained of what she has been doing.
"Mostly what I found very moving was when I resolved and finished a work, and I stood back and looked at it, and I deeply felt that I had brought something back from the dead. It's something I had spent a long time saying good bye to, and then I had rebuilt it, but disfigured and charred, and that was really shocking. Those were the moments that reduced me to tears."
One work has been created from the melted bullbar of a ute. Lee collected the hardened streams of alloy and sculpted them into the word "Now", her response to hearing political leaders saying during the bushfires that "now" was not the time to talk about climate change. The work is titled, "If Not Now, When?"
Another work, created from the burnt remains of the chainsaws her partner used to build their timber home, is daubed with snippets of comments by Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack, while another exhibit features remnants from their destroyed bathroom. There is also a video installation that includes footage of the family home in flames.
"I hope people are shocked by what they see, and feel the experience of losing something to fire, and can make that link between a heating planet and increased fires."
For Braddon Snape, it was gratifying to give Lee a space for her "to try and make some kind of sense of what she was dealing with".
"Those who find themselves in front of this, it's pretty confronting," Snape said.
Creating the works for Carbon Tax have also been confronting for Fiona Lee herself. Until now, she has often used cement. But as as an artist and activist calling for more action on climate change, Lee has come to feel "like a hypocrite" using a material that, in its production, is estimated to account for about eight per cent of the world's green house gas emissions.
"That's been torturous," she admitted. "My work is explicitly about the need to act on climate change, so I've chosen to pursue other materials after this show."
And there will be more shows for Fiona Lee in the Hunter, and, while the residency may be over, she is staying on as a paying tenant at The Creator Incubator.
"It has been a really positive thing doing the residency, and having the time and space to make this work, and to re-establish myself as an artist," she said.
"I feel purposeful with direction, and grateful."
Read more: Fiona Lee works out of the ashes with residency
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