Graham Fagen
Fagen works in a variety of ways to create artworks that examine what he calls
'cultural formers.' His print for the Cove Park Portfolio uses an iconic
image forged from his 'library of ideas' that first appeared in his 2005
solo exhibition and publication Clean Hands, Pure Heart at Tramway,
Glasgow, and more recently in photographic form in his 2006 solo
exhibition Closer at doggerfisher, Edinburgh. The historically-sourced
image leads to notions of identity, symbolism and cultural associations,
in particular to links between Scotland and Jamaica at the time of the
poet Robert Burns. Each time Fagen reworks the image he repositions it
in a new context. The Cove Park print uses a four-colour process,
causing the image to fragment slightly, thus adding a sense of
dramatisation to its form. Fagen is currently showing a public work
in London commissioned by City Projects, and presented a major
collaborative exhibition Killing Time with theatre producer Graham
Eatough at Dundee Contemporary Arts in September 2006, a project
that developed from a 2004 Cove Park residency. A newly commissioned
body of work 'Downpresserer' is currently exhibited at the Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow,
15 March - 28 May 2007, to coincide with the 200th anniversary of
the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade.