Fiona Bruce is a visual communication and performing arts designer currently based in Perth. She is interested in how design can benefit arts organisations, creative industries, social enterprises, and cultural institutions. She enjoys the freedom of working across styles, mediums and disciplines to suit each project’s needs – using research, experimentation and experience to find beauty within the functional and flexible. She believes that ‘cross-pollination’ between design fields and building strong collaborative relationships and a commitment to education and training is the key to producing fresh, exciting work.
Since completing a Masters of Communication Design at RMIT University in 2017, Fiona has broadened her spatial design portfolio to include exhibition design and wayfinding. Her graphic design skills extend to design strategy, visual identity systems, branding, illustration and infographics. Also in 2017, Fiona had the pleasure of working with the National Gallery of Victoria’s exhibition design department for the Art and Design Triennial.
Fiona has worked as a set and costume designer since 2006. Her work has been shown in Melbourne, Perth, Canberra, Darwin and has toured regional WA. She has worked with Black Swan State Theatre Company, The Blue Room, Perth Fringe, Performing Lines WA, PIAF, Metanoia Theatre, and Brown’s Mart Theatre. In 2017 she was invited to participate in Melbourne Theatre Company’s Women in Theatre Program and in 2011 and 2014 she received Equity Guild Awards for her set design work. Fiona trained at Curtin University and the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (2009 Design Award).
PERFORMING ARTS REVIEWS:
“A set (superbly designed by Fiona Bruce) that is an abstract exercise in perspective, diminishing up a raked stage and down lines of massive reinforces concrete towards a vanishing point obscured in shadows…One of Bruce’s stage effects, the most brilliantly conceived and shocking piece of action in the show, cannot be described without a spoiler alert. You need to see it for yourself”.
Boy Gets Girl – The West Australian 21 Sept 2012
“A top nightspot atmosphere has been superbly created by Fiona Bruce…[her] costumes range from the unkempt, drunken Buzzard’s rags to the stunning costumes of the beautiful Lorelei… all demanded accuracy, but the whole show was wonderfully thought out.”
Lorelei – Theatre Australia 30 Oct 2011
“Fiona Bruce’s deer-themed, straw-strewn set design is a tactile delight.”
Yellow Moon – The West Australian 11 Aug 2010
“The real star of Mitchell’s production is Bruce’s eye-popping yet purposeful set…the perfect compliment to this clever, polished and very entertaining production.”
The Shape of Things – The West Australian 10 May 2010
