Blumenstück Künstlers Glück (Part of a Flower is an Artist's Luck)

Invited to participate in this canonical survey exhibition of flower painting and photography by Alexandra Kolossa because of the specific relevance of the series of paintings ‘Without Shame’, made between 1999-2002, this exhibition addressed how representations of the flower in painting, sculpture and photography have changed over the last 400 years. It also investigated what issues link contemporary art dealing with this subject with the art of the past.

The two paintings shown by Fairnington were outcomes from research into Dutch seventeenth century flower painting, the relationship between these paintings, the flowers they depicted, the market and the tulipomania crisis of 1637. The research question focussed on how direct and detailed observation of the natural world were used to generate images that were an expression of the economic desires of a country.

Each of Fairnington's paintings is based upon a collection of fragments from historical works and natural history photographs edited, cropped and rearranged. The manipulation of the images to create hybrid plants, woven into self-consciously decorative ensembles reflected the seventeenth century attempts to cultivate the flowers that were most prized, such as the black tulip. Nevertheless, using monochrome colour-field grounds the paintings position themselves within modernist and contemporary painting and in this context the manipulations become images of genetic engineering. The two paintings were made in 2000 (loaned by Deutsche Bank Collection, Germany) and 2001 (also shown at Mobile Home and currently located at Fred, London) respectively.

Including historical works by Cornelis de Heem, Edouard Manet, Pierre-August Renoir, Emile Nolde, Claude Monet, James Ensor; contemporary works by Georg Baselitz, Cecily Brown, Maurizio Cattelan, Robert Mapplethorpe, Fiona Rae, Gerhard Richter, this exhibition contextualised Fairnington’s work in relation to both contemporary practice and the history of the research subject. Fairnington's two works were shown in a room with pieces by Fred Tomaselli.