Running from Saturday 31st January until Sunday 29th March 2009 @ Arnolfini, Bristol

As soon as you step into the foyer of the Arnolfini for the Angus Fairhurst exhibition, you are immediately hit by the psychedelic primary colours of Underdone/Overdone Wallpaper, a floor to ceiling piece depicting an unrecognisable Epping Forest. You then stumble upon Undone, an enormous, tactile Bronze banana lying in the middle of the floor. In some ways these two pieces represent the extremes of Fairhurst’s body of work; the beautiful, the anarchic, the witty and the absurd.

Fairhurst graduated in Fine Art from Goldsmith’s college in the same year as the infamous Damien Hirst. He adored nature and took an interest in pop culture, both of which feature heavily in this collection. It would be fair to say that Fairhurst never achieved the media notoriety of his contemporary and is almost the antithesis of Hirst. His art is subtle and self deprecating rather than showbizzy and outrageous. In March 2008, Fairhurst took his own life and this retrospective posthumously showcases his work over the last 15 years.

Walking through the installation many recurring themes are evident; Fairhurst loved to use advertising and media images in his work demonstrated perfectly by the displays in Gallery 1. Billboard: Everything But The Outline Blacked In depicts the controversial Sophie Dahl Opium advert but is deconstructed to a fine outline on an imposing black background. Other works using fashion photography are manipulated to remove faces, reverse backgrounds with foregrounds and splice other works of art to create a joyous riot of colour and image.

The stand out composition for me was One Year of the News 01st January – 31st December 2003. Spanning two walls of Gallery 3, it is a mesmerising collection of all the daily newspapers from 2003. Fairhurst coloured copied and layered a week of each paper rendering the text an indecipherable blur.

A famous theme in his body of work is the gorilla which is thought to represent the artist. The animal is depicted contemplating a missing arm in his sculpture A Couple of Difference Between Thinking and Feeling II (Gallery 3) and Gallery 4 contains the wonderfully bizarre gorilla suit stuffed and propped up against the wall.

The exhibition of post modern art is well worth a visit; it’s accessible to everyone whilst remaining intelligent and thought provoking. The death of Angus Fairhurst was a tragedy, especially as he never achieved the exposure of his contemporaries but exhibitions such as this will go some way to show the public what an extraordinary talent he really was.

www.arnolfini.org.uk

Hazel Goodfellow