Dimensions: image: 281 x 219 mm support: 510 x 408 mm
Copyright: © The estate of Angus Fairhurst | CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 DEED, Photo: Tate
Curator: Angus Fairhurst's "Unprinted III" uses layered screen printing to create a spectral figure trapped behind what looks like a chain-link fence. Editor: It feels like a half-formed memory, like a ghost trying to materialize but being held back, or maybe just fading away. Curator: Fairhurst often explored themes of illusion and perception. The layering and the screen's grid pattern give it a sense of something not quite resolved, always in process. Editor: There's a palpable sense of tension between the figure and the background. That grid feels like a cage, or a filter distorting what we see. I wonder about Fairhurst's own perceptions. Curator: Given the artist’s tragic end, one can’t help but read a sense of struggle into it, but perhaps that is too simplistic of an interpretation. Editor: Maybe so, but art often echoes our own experiences, and sometimes a little darkness can reveal the light.
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Unprinted III 2006 is one of a set of three small rectangular photo-etchings mounted on grey paper, which depict silhouettes of women superimposed on top of each other against multi-layered backgrounds. The other works in the set, which are also owned by Tate, are Unprinted I 2005 (Tate P20288) and Unprinted II 2006 (Tate P20289). The prints are largely made up of discrete blocks of colour, the tones of which vary where the layered images overlap. In the central portion of each image a number of silhouettes of women are layered over one another and some elements of their bodies – such as crossed legs and locks of hair – stand out in blocks of white, revealing that they are made from cut-out shapes rather than photographs. Each work offers partial and sometimes contradictory hints of a setting behind the women: Unprinted I includes a dim image of a wall with ridged rectangular shapes reminiscent of door panels or picture frames; Unprinted II features what appears to be flowered wallpaper and light filtering into a room through windows and blinds, while simultaneously showing an area of grass under the silhouetted women’s feet, suggesting that the figures are in fact outside; and the background in Unprinted III includes a wall with frame-like shapes on it overlaid with an image of a chain-link fence.
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