Angus Fairhurst Sold at Auction Prices

Painter, Photographer, Sculptor, Installation Artist, b. 1966 - d. 2008

Angus Fairhurst (4 October 1966 - 29 March 2008) was born in Penbury, Kent, England in 1966 and received a fine arts degree from Goldsmith College in London in 1989. In March 2008 he committed suicide at the age of 41. Throughout his life he worked with a variety of media such as collage, sculpture, painting, installation and performance, and was a member of the group known as Young British Artists, or Y.B.A.’s, who were internationally known for their crude and vulgar works in London throughout the 1990s. He did not have a signature style and was particularly known for his absurdist sense of humor, often using visual distortion and practical jokes.

In 1991 he did a piece in which he networked together the phones of leading London art galleries so that they could only talk to each other, suggesting that the art world is often only interested in speaking to itself. One of his works from 2004 titled “Undone” is a nine-foot-long realistic bronze sculpture of a peeled banana. Another bronze sculpture piece titled “The Birth of Consistency” features the representation of a gorilla gazing at himself in a mirrored pool. He often created layered collages composed of words and images found in advertisements of subways. Another member of the Y.B.A and former classmate of Fairhurst was Damien Hirst. Fairhurst had a lower profile than the notorious Hirst, but his paintings, sculptures and installations were exhibited around the world.