Graham Fagen

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.

Having 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.

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.

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, as well as 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

Rope Tree

2015

Bronze

edition of 1 +1 AP

450 by 400 by 400 cm (approx. 177.2 by 157.5 by 157.5 in.)

 

installation views, 56th International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia, Palazzo Fontana, Venice, 2015

Exhibitions

  • GRAHAM FAGEN: FROM ME TO YOU

    April 19 - May 25, 2019

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  • KILL SWITCH

    May 5 - July 29, 2017

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Publications

  • THE ARCHIVE OF THE MISSPELLING OF GRAHAM FAGEN

    published by Matt’s gallery, London
    june 2021
    9.6 × 7.25 inches (24,4 by 18, 4 cm)
    Essay by Sue Breakell, Archive Leader and Senior Research Fellow at the University of Brighton Design Archives

    softback, 116 pages, 109 color illustrations

    isbn: 978-1-912717-09-5

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  • THE SLAVE'S LAMENT

    published by Galerie de l’UQAM, Montréal, Québec, Canada, Louise Déry and Erica Moiah James
    2018
    10.8 × 8.25 inches ( 27,5 by 21 cm)
    111 pages, full color, English, French

    hardcover

    isbn: 978-2-920325-68-5

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