Athens, French School at Athens, Terrapolis, 2015 (organised by NEON, Athens, and Whitechapel Gallery, London)

Angus Fairhurst, Damien Hirst, Sarah Lucas, In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida (exhibition catalogue), Tate Britain, London, 2004, colour illustration of another cast pp. 70-71

Angus Fairhurst, colleague and close friend of fellow artists Damien Hirst and Sarah Lucas, was known for his wicked sense of humour. A noted example of which was when Fairhurst recorded confused conversations between unwitting gallery employees whom he cross-connected by calling them on separate telephones and holding the receivers together; the conceit offered a sharp and witty portrayal of the self-reflexive, self-obsessive nature of the art world, and is collated in an artwork entitled Connection Galleries and is now owned by Tate.

Gorillas feature at large 🉐in Fairhurst’s works from 1993. Initially recording them in sketches and cartoons, Fairhurst would go on film himself in gorilla suits and cast series of gorillas in various states of existential crisis in bronze. For Fairhurst, the gorilla was an exaggeration of the human: at times intelligent and strong, but fettered by its own comical absurdity. 

In the present work, a gorilla gazes into a pool of water in a scene evoking the mythical figure Narcissus, the boy who fell in love with his own reflection. The gorilla, whose natural form inspires a sense of heavy, clumsy and unwieldy movement, seems frozen to the spot as he gazes at the depiction of himself, assuming the intelligent trait of self-awareness. The title of the present work, The Birth of Consistency, references the philosophy espoused by Jacques Lacan theorising when the human brain becomes capable of concep🎉tualising visual representations; ‘the mirror stage’ is central to the theory, denoting the point at which the ‘ego’ can be formed via a process of self-objectification.

The gorilla, therefore, comical and naturally cartoonish, engages in an inherently human experience. In another work owned by Tate, Fairhurst photographed himself in the arms of a man wearing a gorilla suit (fig. 1); the work is entitled Pietà. This work, like the present work, yoke❀s the serious and the unserious in an elevated and tragic scene corrupted by the su⛎rreal. These works symbolise the absurd and at times laughable afflictions such as self-consciousness and ego that in being human one cannot escape.