my mouth shall speak of wisdom, 2006
cmyk print. 56 x 76cm fully archival standard 300grm paper. Produced for Cove Park by Dundee Contemporary Arts, Print Studio.

Graham Fagen lives and works in Glasgow. He first came to Cove Park to take part in a residency with curator Katrina Brown (now Director of The Common Guild, Glasgow) and theatre maker Graham Eatough in 2006. This led to a number of collaborative projects, including ‘Killing Time’ at DCA in 2007.

Fagen works in a variety of ways to create artworks that examine what he calls ‘cultural formers.’ This print uses an iconic image forged from his ‘library of ideas’ that first appeared in his 2005 solo exhibition and publication Clean Hands, Pure Heart at Tramway, Glasgow, and in a photographic print in his 2006 solo exhibition Closer at doggerfisher, Edinburgh. It references notions of identity, symbolism and cultural associations, with particular reference links between Scotland and Jamaica at the time of the poet Robert Burns. Each time Fagen reworks this strong, graphic historically sourced image he repositions it in a new context.  The new printed version uses a four-colour process, causing the image to slightly fragment, thus adding a sense of dramatisation to its form.

Edition price: £500 (unframed).
This work was commissioned for and included within the Cove Park Portfolio, 2006. Information on this project, its themes, and the artists involved in available here.