Fiona Banner
Fiona Banner is a London-based artist who works across several media to pursue her artistic exploration of language and its limitations. Banner completed a Fine Art BA at Kingston Polytechnic (1986–9) followed by an MA at Goldsmiths College (1991–3)., She first rose to prominence in the 1990s with her written stream-of-consciousness transcriptions (known as ‘wordscapes’) of Hollywood war films. Banner founded her own publishing house The Vanity Press in 1997, which began with The Nam (1997), a 1,000-page ‘wordscape’ of six Vietnam films. Her transcription of a pornographic film in pink ink, entitled Arsewoman in Wonderland (2001), led to her Turner Prize nomination in 2002. Along with language, Banner’s fascination with fighter planes culminated in her installation of two decommissioned Royal Air Force jets at Tate Britain in 2010. More recently, Banner has been producing activist art in collaboration with Greenpeace. She was elected a Royal Academician in 2017 and became Professor of Perspective at the Royal Academy in 2020.
