RESIPOLE Studios in Acharacle hosts a retrospective exhibition of the work of artist ROB FAIRLEY this month. Here the artist explains how the exhibition came about.

FOR many years when I have been asked for an “artist’s statement” I have submitted something along the following lines:

I think artist’s statements are boring and pretentious and firmly believe that a piece of work should stand alone without explanation.

I still hold to this, however as the present exhibition includes a body of work which I have never exhibited before and yet in which almost everything that has followed is grounded, then maybe a few words of introduction (or apology?!) may be necessary.

Rob Fairley - Loch Nevis (pencil, 1980)

This exhibition grew out of a plan to keep the gallery open during the summer of 2010 after Highland Council announced its intention of closing the Corran Ferry to enable (much needed) repair work to be undertaken on the slipways. Andrew Sinclair of Resipole Studios mentioned that he was concerned at offering exhibition space to any artist during this period when access to the gallery from “the mainland” would be so difficult.

I offered to put on an exhibition for him whenever the ferry was “off” on the basis that, if I had any public at all, the majority would come from the Ardnamurchan side. Eventually of course, after much public upset, the Council moved the repair work to out with the summer season and all was well.

In the interim, however, the idea of a retrospective had grown both in my mind and in Andrew’s, and the realisation that there were several unpublished essays available prompted the idea of a catalogue and a more serious exhibition than I think either of us had at first envisaged.

Rob Fairley - Centre Panel, Kindertotenleider, 1998

The fact that one of these essays deals in some detail with work which is very different to how the public think of my work, and although it has utterly defined a lifetime’s working practice, has never been to the forefront. It makes this exhibition something akin to “coming out”! This work would now be contained (almost) under the banners of Land Art and/or Performance Art, but back in the 1970’s such names did not really exist and in truth neither are strictly applicable.

In November 1989, Richard Jacques wrote a review for The Scotsman of one of my one man shows in Edinburgh’s Open Eye Gallery, stating that maybe by working in the high clean cold air of the Himalayas one saw things with a clearer eye, and in summing up an extremely generous appraisal of the exhibition said that with my work “what you see is what you get”.

The phrase stuck and, in discussing my work, has been used by many commentators over the years. However, he could not have been more wrong. Rarely, if ever, in my work, is what you see all there is. Indeed the multiplicity of layers of meaning are a problem, and as Claire Gibb points out in her catalogue essay I have always had a tendency to “attempt too much within the confines of a single piece”.

Rob Fairley - Portrait Drawing (2003)

It will no doubt come as a surprise to many of the folk in Moidart and Ardnamurchan, who over the years have been kind enough to purchase work, that their painting is not just a straight landscape but is in all probability the recording of some ritual or of some other form of interaction with the land. This has never been hidden, and very often the title has given a clue; however, if the viewer has not wanted to explore the other strands enclosed in a piece I have never volunteered the information.

Always there has been a story behind an image and a story that connects to other thinking … though maybe the indigenous people of Australia would call it “dreaming” … always there has been a connection to “the limitless terra incognita of the human mind” and what Huxley called the “Perennial Philosophy”.

And already I am moving into typical Artist Statement language!

Andrew Sincalir comments: “Hosting a retrospective exhibition from Rob Fairley has delighted me both as an artist and as a gallery curator. His work when I grew up here in Lochaber was a source of inspiration for me creatively, and to find out the inspiration for him as an artist will be hugely interesting to all art lovers and artists in the area.

“The Rob Fairley Retropsective displays work from over thirty years of his artistic career and gives a great insight into the workings of one of our most accomplished Lochaber-based artists.

“This is also the man who began forming, almost twenty years ago, the now Internationally recognised Room13. Which has changed the way creativity in children is developed and encouraged within the educational system.”

Rob Fairley Retropsective, Resipole Studios, Acharacle, until the end of July.

© Rob Fairley, 2011

Links

• Resipole Studios
• Room 13