Born in Eire in 1961, Fergal Stapleton lives and works in London. Stapleton uses a range of media, including painting, sculpture, assemblage, installation and video. His practice keenly focuses on the leftovers of existence, suggesting through his works a not quite divine cosmic order. Stapleton’s subjects include his cat, loose change, marginal darkness and un-specifiable gewgaws, which he protrays using such diverse materials as oil paint, light-bulbs, LEDs, tinsel, card, concrete, plaster, MDF, household paint, perspex, motors, and gold and silver leaf. There is an undercurrent of humor that runs throughout Stapleton’s work, measuring and maintaining optimal levels of pathos and hope, as exemplified by such pieces as “I SHALL ARRIVE SOON”, a series of poster-sized portrait paintings of his cat, or “Planet of the Clowns”, a barely anthropomorphic slab of ply board adorned with a concrete sphere and a red light bulb. Salvaged from disuse and pity, these quotidian objects seem to expand beyond the everyday to become the locus of some pressing existential knot.
Recent solo exhibitions include2moro / Carl Freedman Gallery / London / UK (2014), dOr / Carl Freedman Gallery / London / UK (2010), “If one good deed in all my life I did, I do repent it from my very soul” at V22, London (2009), “And a Door Opened” at Carl Freedman Gallery, London (2007) and “Stapleton Grey” at Carl Freedman Gallery, London (2005). His work has also been shown as part of “Newspeak. British Art Now” at The State Hermitage Museum, St-Petersburg (2009), “V22 Presents: The Sculpture Show” at the Almond Building, London (2009), “Space Now” at Space Studios, London (2008), “Toutes Compositions Florales” at Carl Freedman Gallery, London (2006), Picture Room at Gasworks, London (2003), The Straight or Crooked Way at the Royal College of Art, London (2003), “Chockerfuckingblocked” at Jeffrey Charles Gallery, London, The Ink Jetty at Neon, London (2002), and The Green Room at Percy Miller Gallery, London (2002).
Fergal Stapleton is represented by Carl Freedman Gallery, London.
For additional information about this artist, visit Mutual Art
