Angus Fairhurst  was born in Penbury, Kent in 1966. He studied at Canterbury Art College from 1985-6 and then went on to Goldsmiths College; he graduated in 1989. During the 1990's Fairhurst became an influential figure in the group which became known as the yBa's: Young British artists. He has exhibited widely in group shows and was included in Apocalypse at the Royal Academy, London in 2000. The following year he had solo exhibitions at the Spacex Gallery in Exeter and the Kunsthalle, St Gallen, in Switzerland. Fairhurst lives and works in London.He studied at Canterbury Art College 1985-1986 and graduated in 1989 in Fine Art at Goldsmith’s Collage, where he was in the same year as Damien Hirst. The two became close friends and have collaborated on many projects. Fairhurst was also for several years the partner and sometime-collaborator of Sarah Lucas.

He lives and works in London. Fairhurst's work is often characterised by visual distortion and practical jokes. In 1991 he did a piece in which he networked together the phones of leading contemporary art dealers in London so that they could only talk to each other – a witty and telling remark that the art world is often only interested in speaking to itself.

Angus Fairhurst has exhibited nationally and internationally since graduating from Goldsmiths.

Angus Fairhurst has developed different strands of ideas and works, constantly re-visiting, re-thinking and re-working, often to such a degree that one work or group of works might have no apparent formal properties in common with any of the other.
Painting, performance, animation, photography, video, sculpture, prints, wallpaper, drawings and collages, all artistic means are used. While constantly developing and revising these ideas contradictions are openly present not by default but rather by intent.
From the outset Angus Fairhurst has played with the viewer`s expectations, creating possibilities within the impossible - or in his own words, operating in "a false dawn on the road to personal and artistic freedoms“. Like the recurring motif of the banana skin, Fairhurst`s work moves on slippery ground, possible meaning is always confronted with its own travesty, its own comedy; or as with the banana - possible references implicit - what is left is often only the skin. There is a simultaneous doing and undoing – "keep adding until you can´t add anything else, take everything away until there is nothing left.“ The staging and the failing of expectations is one of the recurring themes in Fairhurst`s work - any possibility is always injected with an excess of doubt, with its own critique, its own sense of inappropriateness. "I am not trying to pull the wool over anyone´s eyes, or set anything up that is impermeable, everything that is done reveals itself. There is, or there should be no illusion in the making of any structure. Every step on the way is clear and each step is in itself quite banal, even quite an obvious step to make. Whatever happens, however, happens between each step.“ This approach of doing and undoing of self-revelation and humorous self-contradiction, becomes also apparent when reading some of Fairhurst`s titles, like "Low Expectations, Lower Expectations, Lowest Expectations“; "Fainter and Fainter“; "The Missing Link“; "Underdone/Overdone“; "Things that don´t work properly, things that never stop“; "Inflated, deflated“; "Some went mad, some ran away“; "A cheap and ill-fitting gorilla suit“;"My house fell down but now I can see the stars“, so on.

His most recent works such as "Six Billboards, Body and Text Removed“, (2004) combine and make parallel approaches already present in earlier works, such as "All Evidence of Man Removed“ from 1992 onwards in which he removed all the figures and man-made elements from postcards, or the over-layering of different structures, as present in works such as "Low Expectations, Lower Expectations, Lowest Expectations“ (1997) in which patterns are so densely overlapped that each single structure becomes harder to read. This illegibility, this dense and opaque text has left its original references behind.

"It´s like saying a word over and over again until it loses its meaning, and then gets it back again. The sheer sense of the parallel is always exhilarating. That sudden moment of recognition, being suddenly brought out and suddenly thrown back in again.“

Fairhurst’s work is often structured like an open-ended riddle, in which clues in the form of wordplay or visual puns are left unresolved. He is best known for his bronze gorilla sculptures and his collages of billboard advertisements and fashion magazines with the body and text removed, but he works across a range of media, from photography and painting to performance, video and animation. Appropriation is at the core of much of his practice. As well as constructing anthropomorphic or stylised versions of nature, he also borrows material and images, subverting their original appearance and value, to create new forms which are at times humorous, or elegant, but always ambivalent.

These paintings all relate to a short animated video, Strange Loops – Dissecting (1996), which featured Fairhurst's surrogate—an undemonstrative gorilla. The film show a figure in an ill-fitting gorilla suit, facing forwards and tentatively swinging its arms and flexing its muscles, before ‘breaking into five rotating cross-sections that reveal diagrammatic flesh and bones.’ The shapes of these elements are held in position for a moment, before being stretched across the screen into horizontal patterns that then echo those of the Expectations paintings. At the end of this short sequence, these patterns then morph, appearing finally to reconstitute the gorilla and thus, setting the cycle in motion again. Though visually continuous, this transformation of the gorilla into a diagrammatic visual language constitutes a displacement of one representational system by another—of figuration by code.
Angus Fairhurst revels in disjointed humour which he has compared to the move of the knight on the chessboard: bound by rules like all the other pieces but free to strike out in different directions. In failing to live up to expectations without entirely confounding them, such punning is moral not in the prescriptive sense of defining right and wrong, but more fundamentally. In Fairhurst's words: "A so-called animal battle against the inhuman structures of over-civilization is very moral, in the sense that it's done for the love of something."

Earlier works used vastly enlarged postcard images whose surfaces were pierced by a close grid of plastic clothing tags. Fairhurst sees even this obvious index of consumerism as operating in a double-edged way. The tag does invoke the ersatz individuality of the processes of consumption, but it doesn't entirely reject this aspect. Likewise, the tags penetrate the surfaces of the images. This may seem vaguely repellent, particularly when, as is often the case, the images contain people, but because of their size they also draw the viewer into a more intimate relationship with the image. More recently Fairhurst has used his own, rather than found, imagery. The recent "All evidence of Man removed," gives a literal account of what has been done to a group of scenes that collectively evoke West Coast suburban affluence. In some cases, such as Chimp Bongos (all evidence of Man removed) (all works 1993), and Urban, Evidence of Man Left Out (There Goes the Neighbourhood) any part of the composition that would depict either a person or something constructed has been left blank. In others, such as Diver and Pool, All Other Elements Drilled, a penciled grid has been superimposed on the watercolour scene and in each square where something similarly human or constructed falls he drilled a hole. Caroline Caley's schematic line drawings--more floral patterns than flowers--on large wooden panels chimed in with Fairhurst's work without adding to the exhibition as a whole.

Like the tags, which act both to obscure and to focus an image, Fairhurst's action in absenting humanity from his pictures does nothing of the sort. Instead, it emphasizes humanity as something that requires anchoring or orientation, and in this the images in "

All evidence of Man removed" are the flip side to an earlier work, Man and Woman Abandoned By Space, 1992, which contained numerous pictures of a male and a female figure jumping in a void. They were transfers, "suspended, waiting for (their) base." An installation entitled Diver, in the second room, immersed the viewer in this same featureless void. White plastic on the floor and a huge blue laser-copy covering one wall placed us at the bottom of a swimming pool. Two video monitors on the floor played silent, looped sequences of a man and a woman somersaulting on a trampoline. You might think that sorting out which way is up in a situation like that would be the way to find some meaning. But meaning, as Fairhurst once told Damien Hirst, is "a short man who kicks you in the shin. . .It's a new verb, it's how he treats people.... so small that it matters."

Young British Artists or YBAs  also Brit artists and Britart  a group of conceptual artists, painters, sculptors and installation artists derived from the Sensation Saatchi Gallery Exhibition.

Collecting Art 7 Golden Rules

Collecting art can be a rewarding hobby, but also a serious one. If you collect art with hope to earn a return on your investment in the future, it's even more serious. You might not be able to purchase all original paintings or prints, so oil reproduction paintings might be your next choice of investment.

Reproductions are hand-painted by experienced artists to recreate an original painting as closely as possible. The artist captures the mood, techniques and lighting of the original artist. That's why many art lovers who are unable to make large financial investments in art choose reproductions.
Here are some tips to help you get started if you're thinking of collecting reproductions.

Buy What Appeals to You
Don't make the mistake of buying art only for investment. You should buy reproductions that appeal to you. When buying only for investment, you get no real value out of the painting. You probably won't hang it anywhere or actually "use" it.
Be a Wise Art Collector
Collecting art can be done by anyone, but an expert knows what to look for and where to find it. You don't have to go to school to be a wise collector. You can educate yourself about art reproductions by reading art magazines, visiting many different art galleries, attending art fairs or expos, etc. During your next vacation, tour art galleries and museums in the area to get ideas. You can also gather facts about art by researching through the library, studying online resources about art, and getting to know other art collectors.

Compare Quality and Prices
Study and compare prices along with quality before spending your money on a painting. A reproduction of a famous painting might not always be of highest quality. The canvas and oil paints used as well as the artist each play an important role in how a painting is put together. If you have a painting in mind you'd like to purchase, try getting a photo of the original if possible to compare the two. Although no two paintings will ever match exactly, reproductions should come very close.
Know Your Seller
Before buying a painting, make sure your seller is trustworthy. It only takes a moment to check with the Better Business Bureau online to be sure there are no complaints about the company or individual. Contact a few previous customers if possible. Whether buying online or off, make sure the seller provides plenty of information about their products and services.
Online Auctions and Web sites
Online auctions can be another great way to find unique paintings, but watch out for sellers with negative feedback. Check out their ratio of buyers versus the type of feedback they've received.See also Newsletter often sale hugely discounted Artist rejects for pocket money in Bargain Basement section.

Care for Your Art Properly
After buying a painting, you'll need to care for it properly. Don't apply wet sprays when dusting the painting or frame. Use a feather duster instead. Hang the painting away from direct sunlight to avoid fading or cracking. Other care methods can usually be obtained from the seller when you purchase your reproduction.
Protect Your Investment
Buy insurance for your paintings to protect them from weather damage or theft. Take photos of each painting and label them by artist, seller, date purchased and the name of the painting so you'll have a record of your entire collection. Have your paintings appraised by a professional to get a real value total of your collection.
Whether you collect many different types of art or like to stay with one artist or style, you can use these tips to build a valuable collection of reproductions.

Angus Fairhurst Painting The Problem with Banana Skins Painting on rolled canvas painted with artists acrylic paint. Hand painted copy.30" x 40" canvas R.R.P. £179.99

SALE Price £97

Angus Fairhurst Couple of Differences between Thinking and Feeling Painting on rolled canvas painted with artists acrylic paint. Hand painted copy.30" x 40" canvas R.R.P. £179.99

SALE Price £97

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