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Research Projects

Graham Fagen

Main project collaborators

Including: Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh; Tramway, Glasgow; National Theatre of Scotland, Glasgow; Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow; The Changing Room Gallery, Stirling; Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh; Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art; Dundee Contemporary Arts; Artpace, San Antonio and Matt’s Gallery, London.

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Context and background

Graham Fagen Research Graham Fagen is one of Scotland’s and the UK’s foremost contemporary artists.
For two decades his work has been dedicated to examining the ways in which cultures are produced and shaped in relation to each other and how they are negotiated by people and objects; what he calls ‘cultural forms and formers.’

Fagen’s work mixes media and crosses continents; combining video, performance, photography, and sculpture with text, live music and even plants. His recurring artistic themes, which includes flowers, journeys and popular song, are used as attempts to understand and talk clear-sightedly about the powerful forces that shape our lives.

Aims and objectives

Fagen aims to create works which explore how national or personal identity is both created by, and is a response to, its cultural context. His work traces the ways that people understand and influence cultural production in other parts of the world. He describes his research and practice as an enquiry into cultural formers. What shapes our culture and how in turn does that shape us and how we communicate with and understand other cultures?

Through separate research projects he has addressed the social, cultural and political effects of war and the use of plants – the concept of nature as cultural healer. His research also focuses on the concept of identity and belonging. He aims to reflect and amalgamate different social influences, histories and cultural markers to achieve a collective sense of history and identity.

Outputs

Graham Fagen Research For his critically acclaimed Clean Hands Pure Heart (2005), Fagen collaborated with musician Ghetto Priest to record a dub reggae rendition of celebrated Scottish lyricist Robert Burns’s famous songs Auld Lang Syne and The Slave’s Lament. Fagen’s solo exhibitions include Somebody Else, the Changing Room, Stirling (2009); Downpresser, Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow (2007); and Killing Time with Graham Eatough, Dundee Contemporary Arts (2006). He represented Scotland in the Zenomap exhibition at the 2003 Venice Biennale and has shown work in numerous other group exhibitions, including Breakthrough, Imperial War Museum, London (2008); the Art and Industry Biennale, Christchurch, New Zealand (2004); the Busan Biennial, South Korea (2004); and the British Art Show 5 (2000).

From September to November 2011 Fagen was the International Artist in Residence at Artpace, San Antonio, concluding with a solo exhibition, Under Heavy Manners, and full colour publication. Missing is a major commission for the re-launch of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery (December 2011). Fagen created a new moving-image work which looks into the world of the missing. The work also toured with the National Theatre of Scotland’s production of Andrew O’Hagan’s play The Missing.

The Making Of (April 2012) is the latest collaboration between theatre director Graham Eatough and visual artist Graham Fagen, working with director of photography Michael McDonough and film producer Angela Murray. Developed by Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art in partnership with National Theatre of Scotland, the project benefitted from a Creative Scotland Vital Sparks award of £99,953 and is one of the key commissions within the Director’s programme for the Festival.

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