Maureen Paley is pleased to presentthe second exhibition at the gallery by Los Angeles based artist Fiona Connor, held at our gallery at 4 Herald Street. Bringing together two series of works, I haven't arrived yet and Closed Down Clubs, this exhibition continues Connor’s interrogation of often overlooked peripheral forms and spatial details within sites of exchange and communication.

“The process of remaking something requires obsession: you look at the object and you draw it and map it and work out how to remake it – in some sense you become the thing – and when it is made, although it reminds you of the original thing, it has a different sort of heat because it has been translated through another body and a different set of tools.” – Fiona Connor, 2019.

Closed Down Clubs forms part of an ongoing archive composed of one-to-one reproductions of doors from now-closed nightclub or community establishments. Encountered in situ by Connor, these sites are minutely documented and faithfully re-rendered as freestanding sculptures. Signs of daily wear are maintained, along with paper ephemera, which she recreates and then silkscreens onto aluminium foil. These notices span flyers, eviction notices, stickers, and letters of closure, accentuating the situational and socially constructed nature of space.

Through their careful mimicry, the works from the Closed Down Clubs series offer sculpture as a form of preservation, recalling the accuracy usually reserved for photography. Installed in systematic rows, they evoke the structured nature of a database or archive, generating a facsimile of order from objects drawn from the dispersed public sphere. This arrangement contradicts the inherently haphazard nature of closures to community spaces within an unpredictable private sector. Their freestanding presentation also allows the binary implications a door normally signifies — in /out, locked/unlocked — to be circumnavigated as viewers engage with them on all sides.

The works draw from sites across London, Los Angeles, Toronto, and remote Aotearoa New Zealand. Among them, The Glory recreates the door of the East London LGBTQ+ bar situated on Kingsland Road, which ran from 2014 to 2023. Elsewhere, Papa Cristo's was a Greek restaurant and market that operated for 77 years before closing in May 2025 due to high rents, while The Imperial Pub recreates the door of the eponymous Toronto bar that served its downtown community for eight decades before closing to make way residential properties. Installed together, the works draw these dispersed geographic sites into relation with one another.

Also on display is I haven't arrived yet, 2024, a series of bronze casts of shoes. The work is characteristic of Connor’s approach, which has been described as producing a "crafted readymade". Bronze casting is both an act of faithful reproduction and one of transformation. Connor works within this tension, elevating mass-produced and commonplace items through a material steeped in cultural significance. In doing so, she redirects bronze's commemorative traditions — historically reserved for monuments and public figures — toward the preservation of the overlooked and the temporary. Situated directly on the floor, I haven't arrived yet evokes a domestic sensibility in contrast to the public nature of the venue entrance. Positioned at the threshold of the gallery, the works recall the intimate entryway of a home. These sculptures preserve the creases of worn shoes, lending a quiet care to these everyday objects. Like Closed Down Clubs, the shoes reinforce the idea that space acquires meaning only through occupation and experience.


Fiona Connor (b. 1981, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand) currently lives and works in Los Angeles, California. A solo exhibition of Fiona Connor, Drawing something under itself, was presented at the Kunstverein Düsseldorf, Germany in 2022. I haven't arrived yet was recently shown in the exhibition “If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.”, Territorio #8, Fidelidade Arte, Lisbon, and travelled to Culturgest Porto, Portugal (2025); and in cover me softly, Beta Architecture Biennial 2024, Timișoara, Romania (2024).

Recent solo exhibitions include: Rooms I have keys to, Fine Arts, Sydney, Australia (2025); Hereditary, 100 Bell Towers, Montréal, Canada (2024); My muse is my memory, an archive of Closed Down Clubs, Château Shatto, Los Angeles, California, USA (2022); Closed for installation, SculptureCenter, New York, USA and Secession, Vienna, Austria (2019); Direct Address, 1301PE, Los Angeles, USA (2018); Closed Down Clubs, MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Los Angeles (2018); Wallworks, Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne (2014) and A section of Something Transparent (please go round the back) II, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland (2010).

Selected group exhibitions include: “If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.” Territorio #8, Fidelidade Arte, Lisbon, Portugal; travelling to Culturgest, Porto, Portugal (2025); cover me softly, Beta Architecture Biennial 2024, Timișoara, Romania (2024); Ecstatic, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, USA (2023); Walls to Live Beside, Rooms to Own, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland (2022); Daily Nightshift, Kunsthal Extra City, Antwerp (2020); Celebration of Our Enemies, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, USA, (2019); Haunt, Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, Australia (2019); Berman Board, Armory Centre for the Arts, Los Angeles, USA (2019); Chicago Architecture Biennial, Chicago, USA (2017); 1st and 2nd Los Angeles Biennials (2014, 2012).

Connor’s work is included in the following collections: Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland; Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Berkley; Collezione La Gaia, Torino; Dunedin Public Art Gallery, Dunedin; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; University of Washington, Seattle; LACMA, Los Angeles; Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; The Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington.