Sculptor and Installation

Anna Fairchild is an artist and lecturer who lives and works in Hertfordshire, UK.

After graduating with a first class honours degree from Kingston University in 1988, she went to live and work in Istanbul, Turkey, spending the next decade living and working in collaboration with other artists, film makers and writers there.

Since returning to the UK in 2001, she has set up a large studio and continues to work on a range of projects in both the UK and abroad.

Her work explores and investigates themes of fragmented place, time, distance and memory through sculpture, photography, printmaking and installed work.

Elements of light, shadow, absence and form using actual space and available or constructed light sources and objects together with ‘in camera’ effects are explored through varying photographic formats-35mm, digital and combinations of the two (In Camera, 2008). These individual or fragmented images have been used to create momentary frozen extracts which can be read as stills from a broader filmic narrative.

Much of the recent work uses complex combinations of single still images to construct ‘tapestry’ like pieces which can also be viewed as a from of abstract storyboarding for a film like event.

Examples of these themes and ideas can be seen in pieces such as; Map Memories (1997); In Camera series (2008) and Lamp Collage 1 and 2 (2008).

Current projects include working with fragmented photographic image and projection exploring themes of nightmares, boredom and the contrast of innocence and sinister pleasure through simple structures using light, shadow, line and puppetry. These projects encompass both still single photographic images as well as short animated sequences.

Other work, which, although based in hand rendered drawing utilises digital photography and print techniques together with text to produce a series of work entitled ‘Film Posters for Unrealised Projects’ 2009.

From this series the two posters “Land of the Lost’ (Northern Print Biennale 2009 and ‘There and Back’ 2009 (Shown at Lucid Dream, Bath Festival 2009) use hand-rendered image and text combined with digital photography to create posters for imaginary films exploring the ideas of lost fragments of time and place and how a colour or pattern or smell can evoke the feeling of another time or space and how in terms of sound or visual memory we can be caught between realities. They encounter print as part of the conceptual content of the work.

In short, Anna Fairchild documents the transitory nature of sculptural elements and our place in space and time through photography and print exploring the essence of an idea or narrative which is fleetingly captured.

See more of Anna's work here