Fiona Hall
Fiona Hall | Australia b.1953 | Medicine bundle for the non-born child (detail) 1993–94 | Aluminium, rubber, plastic Layette comprising matinee jacket: 27.5 x 47.5 x 10cm, bootees: 7 x 5 x 8.5cm and bonnet: 13 x 13 x 6cm; rattle: 32 x 8.5 x 6cm; six-pack of baby bottles: 17 x 20 x 13cm | Purchased 2000. Queensland Art Gallery Foundation Grant | Collection: Queensland Art Gallery
Fiona Hall
Australia b.1953
Medicine bundle for the non-born child 1993-94
Aluminium, rubber, plastic
Layette comprising matinee jacket:
27.5 x 47.5 x 10cm, bootees: 7 x 5 x 8.5cm
and bonnet: 13 x 13 x 6cm;
rattle: 32 x 8.5 x 6cm; six pack of baby bottles: 17 x 20 x 13cm
Purchased 2000. Queensland Art Gallery Foundation Grant
Collection: Queensland Art Gallery
Fiona Hall
Medicine bundle for the non-born child 1993-94
Fiona Hall is one of one of Australia's most consistently inventive contemporary artists. Medicine bundle for the non-born child 1993-94 is an enchanting baby's layette made from recycled Coca-Cola cans.
Recalling patterns from popular Australian women's magazines, the tiny garments are knitted from strips of aluminium drink cans, and the layette comes complete with a six-pack of teated 'bottles'.
The work explores the history of cocoa leaves from South America and cola nuts from Africa; both important medicinal plants venerated in their original settings. Now Coca-Cola, which originally used both herbs, is revered as the world's favourite soft drink, and as a global marker of modernity. Interestingly, Coca-Cola is successfully used today as a spermicide in parts of the developing world.
Thus Fiona Hall's layette is constructed from an interweaving of different, even conflicting, narratives and histories about the desire for consumer goods.
The work also explores the appropriation of knowledge from Third World societies and, most importantly, the future of the world's children.
