SALA Artist - Steph Fuller

Artist profile

Steph Fuller is a visual artist working on unceded Kaurna Land in South Australia.

Fuller's practice oscillates between longing and loss. Her work is primarily image-based, favouring dark pensive tones and intentional slippage between the macro and micro.

Her post-illness work sees a greater interest in bringing the image into sculptural contexts and working with found objects. A new scarcity of capacity brings restraint to her practice but fuels a desire to occupy more space than before.

Gallery

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Artist Comments

The empty vase 
2022
Photography / Inkjet print on cotton rag paper
100 x 73 cm

This is a self-portrait in the bed that I was so often confined to, where I had to rest between exposures. A record of the lowest point of my ill-health.

Prophecy 
2023
Photography / Inkjet print on cotton rag paper
100 x 74 cm

When my chronic fatigue syndrome is at its worst, I am rendered bedbound. It feels like being trapped beneath a current, unable to move, ceasing to exist. The invisibility of this condition wears me down, and I wanted to make a photograph that conveyed what most people never see: the depths of a fatigue crash.

The cruel irony is that the physical act of creating such a photograph would surely put me in the very state of incapacity that it aims to depict. Post-exertional malaise is one of the main symptoms of this condition, and I have struggled immensely to come to terms with it. It feels like a prophecy in an ancient play; an absurd predication that can surely be avoided once it is known. But no amount of time, rest, medicine, or willpower will change the outcome, and your immobile body will give you no choice but to concede.

This picture marks a quiet shift towards acceptance. Creating it would indeed invoke the cycle of malaise, but it was a sacrifice made knowingly. I have all but disappeared from my own life, so it was worth it to somehow take up a bit of space in the world again, and I feel like I have reclaimed a small part of myself in doing so.

Description of the artwork

1. the empty vase: A black and white photograph of the silhouette of a person sitting hunched over in bed in front of a bright window. The floral pattern on the duvet cover is faintly visible where the quilt reaches down to the floor. The subject’s right hand is supporting their head, and their left hand is holding a vase. The left hand and the vase are blurry from the movement of pouring a glowing white liquid out onto the ground.

2. Prophecy: A darkly-exposed black and white photograph of a Venus di Milo garden statue lying submerged in a creek, viewed from above. Blades of grass reach out towards the figure, who is partially obscured by murky water and silt that can be seen settled into the folds of her dress.

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