Fiona Banner

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Fiona Banner (born 1966) is an English artist, who was short listed for the Turner Prize in 2002.

She was born in Merseyside and now lives in London. She studied at Kingston University and completed her MA at Goldsmiths College in 1993. The next year she held her first solo show at City Racing. Following her shows at the Neuer Aachener Kunstverein,and Dundee Contemporary Arts, she was nominated for the Turner Prize. More recent shows include at The Power Plant, Toronto, and Live/Work, at MOMA, New York.

Fiona Banner’s medium is words. The possibilities and limitations of language as a tool of communication lie at the heart of her practice. Building huge pictorial texts she takes language apart, stripping it bare in order to make and unmake meaning.

Much of her work is influenced by feature films; including Point Break (1991), The Desert (1994) and particularly The Nam (1997), a 1,000 page book which describes the plots of six Vietnam films in their entirety: Apocalypse Now, Born On The Fourth of July, The Deer Hunter, Full Metal Jacket, Hamburger Hill and Platoon.

The wall of her show in the Turner Prize at Tate Britain was dominated by a large text piece Arsewoman in Wonderland. This caused a certain commotion in the media, as it was a vivid description of a pornographic film. The Guardian wittily reversed the widespread question and asked, "It's art. But is it porn?" calling in "Britain's biggest porn star", Ben Dover, to comment.[1]

In 1997 Banner formed The Vanity Press, through which she publishes her own works, such as “the Nam”, “The Bastard Word” and “All The World's Fighter Planes”.


  1. ^ Brockes, Emma "It's art. But is it porn?", The Guardian online, November 5, 2002. Retrieved May 21, 2007.

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