Fiona Banner aka The Vanity press
Banner was born on Merseyside, North West England in 1966 and lives and works in London. She studied at Kingston University and completed her MA at Goldsmiths College of Art in 1993. Banner’s work has been exhibited in prominent international venues such as the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Hayward Gallery, London, Tate Britain, London. In 2002 Banner was shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 2002 and she created Harrier and Jaguar, the installation of fighter jets for the Duveens Commission, at Tate Britain in 2010. Her work is represented by Frith Street Gallery, London, Galerie Barbara Thumm, Berlin, 1301PE, Los Angeles and Barakat Contemporary, Seoul.

As her moniker suggests language and publishing are at the heart of her practice - Banner’s attitude is at once playful and often performative. Her work centres on the problems and possibilities of language, both written and metaphorical.
In 1997, Banner started her own publishing imprint The Vanity Press, with her monumental book The NAM. She has since published many works, as books, sculptural objects or performances. In 2009 she issued herself an ISBN number and registered herself as a publication under her own name, a sort of self-portrait as a book.
Banner collaborated with Greenpeace in 2020 to deliver Klang, a 1.25 ton Full Stop sculpture to the doorstep of Defra in London. Two further granite full stops, Peanut and Orator, were deployed at sea in the Dogger Bank Marine Protected Area
to prevent bottom trawling.
Most recently, in 2024 she created a military flypast, in which the jets spelled out the word DISARM, which was screened daily at Piccadilly Lights in the centre of London.