Angus Fairhurst - "the partially forgotten one". A contemporary and friend of Damien Hirst and Sarah Lucas, Fairhurst never became such a household name. Often overshadowed by the news of his 2008 suicide, I feel his work has a lot more to offer than just a morbid backstory. I began researching Fairhurst after viewing his video work A Cheap and Ill-Fitting Gorilla Suit at Tate Britain. The artist is seen jumping around his studio, struggling with the inconvenience of the costume until he eventually tears his way out, emerging naked in a surreal metamorphosis from a cartoon-like ape to vulnerable man. It is this vulnerability I am interested in. It is not as evident as for example the explicitly sexual neuroses of Lucas' work or the deathly obsession of Hirst, but Fairhurst reveals to us an acute sense of humanity in all its confusion, absurdity and weakness. Through appropriating the symbol of the gorilla, the artist amuses us yet parodies our human nature in a series of opposites - we are intelligent yet can act so stupidly, we are civilised yet subject to animalistic desires, we are serious yet hilarious. In this way Fairhurst creates a subtle balance between the tragic and the comic, a balance which my practice is also concerned with - amusing an audience yet bringing experiences of a more intimate and emotional nature into discussion. He seamlessly combines a Dada sensibility (anti-art and anti-establishment - for example his piece Gallery Connections, in which two art collectors are forced to engage in a meaningless and confusing conversation with one another) with a Pop aesthetic - a seemingly illogical feat, but one which engages an audience on an immediate level with visual gags and every day imagery yet engages them with complex studies of individual human experience, the role of the artist and the futile absurdity of modern life around us, saturated with Fairhurst's unique blend of piercing satire, refreshing honesty and just enough ambiguity to keep us interested.