Art Monitor: Angus Fairhurst at Sadie Coles

Art Monitor: Angus Fairhurst at Sadie Coles

21 July, 2008
by: Tom Jeffreys

Another week, another opening. Wandered past Tracey Emin (again), bumped into an old Oxford chum who now works at the gallery, looked at some paintings, tucked into the free booze... Honestly, it's a tough old life at Spoonfed. But unlike the frantic pap-happy knees-up at the White Cube last month, the opening of Angus Fairhurst's latest show at Sadie Coles was actually all about the art.

Fairhurst made his name in the early '90s with a series of conceptual works characterised by a combination of confrontation and wit: in 1991, for example, he networked together the phones of London's leading contemporary art dealers so that they could only talk to each other. Funny and clever: now that don’t happen too often.

Over the course of his career, Fairhurst has worked in a massive variety of media: from installation to video, photography to sculpture, he's pretty much covered it all. So whilst the new show represents something of a departure for Fairhurst, that's not really something that should come as a surprise. For his third exhibition at Sadie Coles, the artist presents a selection of large scale paintings and a group of new sculptures that seek to explore the spatial dynamics of the modern urban environment.

Upon entry, the gallery is dominated by two huge paintings. Almost architectural in terms of composition, these works examine notions of space and the interaction between spaces. With large flat panels of orange and tiled floors in a range of greys, their harsh perspectives somehow squash the eye inwards. Whether interior or exterior, however, it is hard to tell: no sky means no air and no contextual exterior within which to locate these works. All is man-made, all is surface. The only hints of nature here come from some vague wisps of green in Schopfun.

In counterpoint to this flat blankness are areas of more painterly texture and collage. Fairhurst has attached adverts and photographed images to the canvas, but has ripped out centres and painted over faces. These areas provide the focal point to the works as the flat and linear is overlaid with scumbled clutter. And yet, by removing the specificity of these collaged materials, Fairhurst creates a void at the heart of each work. The emptiness of Fata Morgana in particular forces a desire to know or to have and some sense of anonymous eroticism.

Likewise, The Great Ecstasy, a resin wall sculpture of a To Let sign with the centre ripped out, evokes notions of urban decay, violence and vandalism. If an advert (or indeed, all text) is about communication, then what Fairhurst does in each piece is to remove the salient information. This act both renders the advert ineffectual and, conversely, increases one's interest in it by arousing an ever-thwarted desire for knowledge.

Downstairs sees several smaller paintings following the same themes and styles as those upstairs. The effect of these other works is to extend and multiply the artist's ideas. As a whole, their effect is powerfully alienating, but individually these smaller works are simply less effective than those upstairs. The concepts that Fairhurst is grappling with perhaps require scale in order to be properly explored.

But this is a great exhibition – full of engaging, rigorous, thoughtful pieces. Sadly, it's not too often that art is genuinely exciting, but when it is, you really don't want to miss out. If all gallery shows were like this, they probably wouldn't even need free booze or the promise of celebrities to make me come along. But, well, I doubt it.

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Tom Jeffreys