Angus Fairhurst
September 2004
A graduate of Goldsmiths' and a participant in the warehouse exhibition 'Freeze' (1988) curated by fellow student Damien Hirst, Fairhurst's work to date has been a mixture of painting, video, prints, photography and music with his band, 'Low Expectations' (though the name has fluctuated from 'Top Ten Expectations' to Lowest Expectations').
Fairhurst's fascination with 'the process of repetition and reduction in the open-ended pursuit of an idea' (1) is of paramount importance to his working practice.
Repetition of image or object, juxtaposed with text, is characteristic of an early piece consisting of six wood, glass and gel boxes (illustrated in Technique Anglaise, 1991) with the words, Hello, let me introduce myself/ I was made with you in mind/ I was made for living in/ I'm fun, I'm fearless/ and I'm the best/ so wise up and try me, intriguingly penned on each box. The text, in fact, started life as a label Fairhurst found inside a shirt,
…I was rocked back on my heels by that. I wanted to believe that I was one in a million, but at the same time I knew there were thousands of these shirts. I did a piece with 2,000 of those labels stuck on board in grid formation. I wanted to ensure it was clear I didn't write the labels but that they came from clothes. So I started to use the plastic tags (2)
Fairhurst began to incorporate plastic tags in his work in photo-pieces. Man with Dream Colours is a series of four cibachromes of the same man, sitting in a chair, holding four brightly coloured plastic tags. The man is ostensibly the artist, though Fairhurst deems the figure to be a 'fictional character' (3). The idea of a figure repeated in a series occurs in the closely related set of prints, When I woke up in the morning the feeling was still there, in which the artist stands in the studio, holding a large square shape/ canvas. Superimposed on each square/ canvas is an intense block of pure colour. Fairhurst contributed one of the series to the London Portfolio published by Paragon Press in 1992 (4).
The set of images evokes the feeling of the night before. The figure's tired, languid pose (slightly different in each print), dressed in clothes he probably had on the night before, gives the impression of a 'hangover or a night of drinking or love, but not specific about the object or nature of the 'feeling' (5).
The concentrated colour on the square is in rich contrast to the chaotic debris of the studio in the background. The caption is at once explicit yet covert. Fairhurst confesses, 'I like jokes and motions within formal structures' (6).
1. Angus Fairhurst, The Missing Link (Sadie Coles HQ. October - November 1998)
2. Interview with Liam Gillick, Gambler (Building One, London. 1990), no pagination
3. Interview with Simonetta Gimella, Angus Fairhurst (Galerie Analix, Geneva. 1992), p.8
4. Contemporary British Art in Print (Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh. February-April 1995), p.47
5. Op. Cit.
6. Gillick
Fairhurst's fascination with 'the process of repetition and reduction in the open-ended pursuit of an idea' (1) is of paramount importance to his working practice.
Repetition of image or object, juxtaposed with text, is characteristic of an early piece consisting of six wood, glass and gel boxes (illustrated in Technique Anglaise, 1991) with the words, Hello, let me introduce myself/ I was made with you in mind/ I was made for living in/ I'm fun, I'm fearless/ and I'm the best/ so wise up and try me, intriguingly penned on each box. The text, in fact, started life as a label Fairhurst found inside a shirt,
…I was rocked back on my heels by that. I wanted to believe that I was one in a million, but at the same time I knew there were thousands of these shirts. I did a piece with 2,000 of those labels stuck on board in grid formation. I wanted to ensure it was clear I didn't write the labels but that they came from clothes. So I started to use the plastic tags (2)
Fairhurst began to incorporate plastic tags in his work in photo-pieces. Man with Dream Colours is a series of four cibachromes of the same man, sitting in a chair, holding four brightly coloured plastic tags. The man is ostensibly the artist, though Fairhurst deems the figure to be a 'fictional character' (3). The idea of a figure repeated in a series occurs in the closely related set of prints, When I woke up in the morning the feeling was still there, in which the artist stands in the studio, holding a large square shape/ canvas. Superimposed on each square/ canvas is an intense block of pure colour. Fairhurst contributed one of the series to the London Portfolio published by Paragon Press in 1992 (4).
The set of images evokes the feeling of the night before. The figure's tired, languid pose (slightly different in each print), dressed in clothes he probably had on the night before, gives the impression of a 'hangover or a night of drinking or love, but not specific about the object or nature of the 'feeling' (5).
The concentrated colour on the square is in rich contrast to the chaotic debris of the studio in the background. The caption is at once explicit yet covert. Fairhurst confesses, 'I like jokes and motions within formal structures' (6).
1. Angus Fairhurst, The Missing Link (Sadie Coles HQ. October - November 1998)
2. Interview with Liam Gillick, Gambler (Building One, London. 1990), no pagination
3. Interview with Simonetta Gimella, Angus Fairhurst (Galerie Analix, Geneva. 1992), p.8
4. Contemporary British Art in Print (Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh. February-April 1995), p.47
5. Op. Cit.
6. Gillick
Jennifer Ramkalawon