Tag Archives: communication

Graham Fagen – somebodyelse

18 March 2009 at 6.30pm

This months Spin: Glasgow travels to Stirling to see a solo exhibition of work by Graham Fagen.

Born in Glasgow in 1966, Graham Fagen lives and works in Scotland. He studied at Glasgow School of Art and the Kent Institute of Art and Design. Fagen’s work focuses on the means of communication within a culture, and how it is compromised or transformed when taken out of context. Many of his projects have explored the notion of cultural identity and meaning. In 2007, Fagen was commissioned by Glasgow Museums to present downpresser, a major solo exhibition at the Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA) for the commemoration of the abolition of slavery. He gained great critical acclaim for Killing Time, his collaborative project with Graham Eatough of Suspect Culture at DCA, Dundee. Fagen has previously exhibited at London’s Imperial War Museum, including Theatre (2000), the ICA and V&A as well as extensively throughhout the world.

somebodyelse is a solo exhibition of portraits by Fagen including a newly commissioned work. The portraits in somebodyelse combine real and imagined figures in order to explore Scotland’s contemporary and historic culture. Works from previous photographic series by Fagen are also on show.

Incommunicado

25 March 2004 at 6pm

As promised, here is some more information about the upcoming Spin event in this impressive exhibition from the Hayward Gallery in London which opened here at the weekend. The Hayward blurb for the show is very illuminating, so I thought I would reproduce it here:

‘The desire to communicate can be a powerful motive behind the production of art, but it is the fallibility of communication that provides the subject for this exhibition.’

Curated by Margot Heller, Director of South London Gallery, Incommunicado brings together contemporary international film, video, photography, sculpture, drawing and text-based work to explore the manifestations and consequences of communication going wrong. The show examines personal misunderstandings, cultural and political clashes and linguistic and expressive limitations.

The importance of language in this context is introduced through work by Samuel Beckett, simultaneously signalling the writers influence on younger generations of visual artists. Central to the exhibition is Comedie (1966), a recently re-discovered film made in collaboration with Marin Karmitz, which reveals the poetic and absurd results of separating language from meaning. Other artists include: Pavel Buchler, Phil Coy, Omer Fast, Angus Fairhurst, Mona Hatoum, Christian Marclay, Bruce Nauman, Hirsch Perlman, Smith/Stewart, Erika Tan, Lawrence Weiner, Francesca Woodman and Chen Zhen.

You can probably tell from this that there will be elements of humour, absurdism, and poetry as well as a stimulating underlying theme to think about, and so it is highly appropriate (and gratifying) that we will have the artist John Beagles to help us negotiate it all! As well as being a lecturer in the Centre for Visual and Cultural Studies at Edinburgh College of Art, John works alongside Graham Ramsay in their art practice as the video/performance/installation art duo Beagles and Ramsay. They have had solo shows all over the place including Canada, Australia and the Netherlands, and are a very popular part of the contemporary scene in Scotland. You might have seen them last year at Zenomap, Scotland’s contribution to the Venice Biennale, the Stills Gallery or at the Collective Gallery.