Graham Fagen - Maus Contemporary

From me to you?

What shapes and forms us and how do we share our thoughts on what we think should shape and form us?

How do we know what is right and wrong?

All my art work is, to a greater or lesser degree, about such questions.

How an object, such as a cross, can suggest meaning. How the colour, shape and form can give a different meaning to different people.

How toys we used as children are understood as weapons when we are older.

The things we do, the things we believe.

From me to you!

- Graham Fagen, March 2019

"Weapons, Fagen's series made in 1998, is a seamless museum display. A room of colour photos, neutral and authoritative, accompanied by dry text panels. Instead of medieval swords or nineteenth-century guns, Weapons describes the street armoury of twentieth-century Scotland.

There's the pish balloon, 'when it struck its target the balloon would burst, showering the recipient with pish. Mostly used in random attacks on unknown enemies.' The flame-thrower consisting of a cigarette lighter and a can of Brut antiperspirant and the home-made crossbow, 'the main purpose was target shooting, but occasionally it would be used to fire at friends or unknown enemies.'

Fagen's presentation is absolutely straight-faced, but amid the black comedy lies a description of something serious. Weapons is at once a documentation of our commonplace resort to violence even at the level of children's games. It is also an examination of what does and doesn't make the history books"

- Moira Jeffrey for The Herald - Scotland, published September 8, 2002 (click image hereunder to read full article)

Graham Fagen "Weapons"

Graham Fagen (born 1966) is a Scottish artist living and working in Glasgow, Scotland. Having collaborated with curators and institutions internationally, his work is complex and increasingly significant within the context of contemporary Scottish art, being one of the most influential artists working in Scotland today. His work mixes media and crosses continents; combining video, performance, photography and sculpture with text, live music and plants. Fagen’s recurring artistic themes, which include flowers, journeys and popular song, are used as attempts to understand the powerful forces that shape our lives.

Fagen studied at The Glasgow School of Art (1984-1988, BA) and the Kent Institute of Art and Design (1989-1990, MA), and is currently a Professor at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design in Dundee. In 1999 Fagen was invited by the Imperial War Museum, London to work as the Official War Artist for Kosovo, and since then has exhibited widely both in the UK and abroad. In 2015 Graham Fagen was selected to represent Scotland at the 56th Venice Biennale.

Vehiculating a profound understanding of art history - while constantly establishing parallels to contemporary issues within a multitude of different practices - his oeuvre ranges from installation-based works to drawings on paper, from ceramic sculpture to neon work, from video and sound works to large scale bronzes, never hesitating to visually rephrase various issues in profound ways, and challenging our understanding thereof.

He has exhibited internationally at the Busan Biennale, South Korea (2004), the Art and Industry Biennial, New Zealand (2004), the Venice Biennale (2003) and represented Scotland at the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015 in a presentation curated and organized by Hospitalfield.

His work has been exhibited at the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Tate Britain, the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, and at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Graham Fagen, Scheme for Consciousness

While in residence at Artspace, San Antonio (2011), Fagen made his first attempt to consciously explore his interest in teeth. He took a piece of paper and a pencil and used his tongue to feel a tooth in his head, drawing what he felt and repeating the process until he had rendered all of them. He later filled in the forms with enamel paint, using India ink to depict the spatial relationship between his teeth and their location in his skull. In process, he came to realize that he was not drawing “teeth” per se, but consciousness itself. The resulting image illuminated a place between representation and consciousness.

I think I’m interested in many things (concerning teeth); how we look after them and judge others by them. Dental work for the perception of perfect white teeth. The fact that we all have them, dead or alive. Universal but at the same time totally unique. And, for most of us, we communicate our thoughts and feelings to the rest of the world through our top and bottom set.

A lot of inhumanity (is also expressed through teeth) like the way a slave owner or buyer would look at the teeth (of an African) to gauge health and age (or) the news footage I remember seeing of military surgeons checking Saddam Hussein’s teeth hours or days before hanging him.
I see these works as self-portraits, but also portraits of perceived Others.

Extract from Dr. Erica Moiah James Assistant, Professor in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Miami, essay titled Opus V in the publication Graham Fagen The Slave’s Lament 2018. ISBN 978-2-920325-68-5. Published by Galerie de I’UQAM, Montreal, Canada.