Caledonian Inadequezyzy
oil and acrylic on canvas
160x126cm
2024

historic in its void of mud and wire
oil and acrylic on canvas
100x155cm
2024

Day 3
oil and acrylic on canvas
136x122cm
2024

Swedger Island

Chris Farrell

Chris Farrell was born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1994, where he continues to reside. He studied BA Painting at Gray’s School of Art, graduating in 2018, where he was awarded a runner-up prize for the BP Fine Art Award. Upon finishing his undergraduate studies, he was awarded a mentorship bursary with the NAS (New Art School) in 2022, where he joined the GSA MFA thereafter. He has exhibited both locally and internationally, including a recent show at the Hochschule für bildende Künste (HFBK), Hamburg, under curation of Martin Boyce and Graham Ramsay.

“The existence of virtual worlds reveals identity as a performative, multiple and fluid entity. In this sense, we can no longer speak of a scission of a monologic self, but rather of a proliferation of multiple and dialogic representations of the self. A polysyzygiacal identity.”

Farrell's practice, encompassing painting, drawing, digital collage, sculpture, fiction writing, performance, and film, adopts a 'polysyzygiacal' formation. This term, emerging from contemporary Scottish literary theory, updates the concept of 'Caledonian antisyzygy.' While antisyzygy describes the Scottish condition as a 'zig-zag of contradictions', or 'duelling polarities within one entity,' polysyzygy presents Scottish experience as involving a multiplicity of cultural, social, and psycho-spatial divides — "multiple alignments, plural connections, a web of interlinked ideas and words.” This modern conceptualisation of Scottish identity is profoundly influenced by digitisation and the role of digital media in shaping the national landscape. As binary national narratives dissipate into greys of intersectionality, the central conflict of the Scottish psyche evolves into a mesh topology of interconnected concepts and cultural reference points operating in nuances of conflict, harmony, and indifference.

Reflecting on this phenomenon, and the fleetingness of cultural signifiers, Farrell explores what remains and what it means for those experiencing the simultaneous erosion of culture and the hauntological embedding of its spectre into their collective and personal psyche. Informed by this theory, he creates fictionalised self-equivalences, presented as performative self-portraits in film, performance, or through narrative figurative paintings that explore contemporary digital aesthetics. By using these methods, he can fictionalise his lived experiences through the prism of Scotland.

Farrell's practice integrates creative writing and autoethnographical methodologies, forming an ultra-interpretive autoethnographical approach. He feels that his identity is inescapably tied to his nationhood. Through intermedial dialogue between fiction and contemporary art, Farrell translates the specificities and peculiarities of his experience to a broader audience, highlighting the role of digital media as intrinsic to contemporary cultural exchange. He extracts sources from found YouTube footage, personal social media archives, video-game texture packs, 3D CAD models, stock images, and other low-resolution visual materials of interest. With these, Farrell aims to simulate a nearby and distant Scotland, reminiscent of bygone music festivals like 'Rockness' or 'T in the Park', poeticising the simulacrum of his universe through acts of painterly gesture and performative fiction.

Beyond Scotland, fiction and digitisation, Farrell's work delves into themes of phenomenology, mental health, drug abuse, psychosis, problematic masculinity, colloquialism, and queer theory. Through this multifaceted approach, Farrell seeks to communicate the complexities and nuances of contemporary Scottish identity whilst bridging gaps between literature and contemporary art in the process.