Tom Faber
Tom Faber
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A Bao A Qu and The Mace, 2019
Pigment print on Hahnemühle German Etching paper
100 x 135 cm
Edition of 5 + 2AP
Click for larger image here
About this Work
A Bao A Qu and The Mace is part of the ‘Quarry’ series (2018-19). These works were made by scanning detritus and objects from the artist’s studio and from the ground– paint marks, soil, drawings – and then digitally recycling these samples into images. Using this format of translated materials, the work develops a language of distorted mark-making, exploring how the human mind constitutes images of imagined places and beings, and how memory acts on material.
“On the stairway of the Tower of Victory there has lived since the beginning of time a being sensitive to the many shades of the human soul and known as A Bao A Qu. It lies dormant, for the most part on the first step, until at the approach of a person some secret life is touched off in it, and deep within the creature an inner light begins to glow... Its span of life is brief, since as soon as the traveller climbs down, the A Bao A Qu wheels and tumbles to the first steps, where, worn out and almost shapeless, it waits for the next visitor.”
-Jorge Luis Borges’ ‘Book of Imaginary Beings’:
About Tom Faber
Faber’s work focuses on memory, place, and transformation. He produces both videos and digitally printed images, using a blend of techniques from drawing, painting, collage and 3D animation. Faber works with a library of scans, consisting of detritus from his studio and from the ground: paint marks, soil, and drawings. With these materials, he develops a language of distortive mark-making and plays with the possibilities of digital gesture. Converting these sources allows him to explore the assertive, faulty generations of memory, and the resonances of virtual 'world-building’ at a time of environmental damage. Within this framework, he degrades and recycles images. Producing scenes which often have a harmonious surface, these works tend towards the lush escapism of popular animation, but collapse under the effects of weather. Faber’s image-making techniques point towards the natural world, but hover and stall in anxiety and escapism. They find ways of weathering material into a state of erasure, simulating threats to vast and intimate systems.
Education
2017-18 Chelsea College of Arts – Graduate Diploma in Fine Arts (Distinction)
2012-15 University of Cambridge – BA (Hons) History of Art
Awards & Commissions
2019
Winterreise, digital set design for an audio-visual staging of Schubert’s song cycle
Exceptional Graduate Award, Collyer Bristow Gallery (shortlisted)
Glyndebourne Tour Art Competition winner
Residencies
2019
‘United’, UK Young Artists and Platform Nord, Leicester, UK, and Kristiansand, Norway
Kunstnarhuset Messen, Ålvik, Norway
Exhibitions
2019
Quarry, Ionion Centre for the Arts and Culture, Kefalonia (solo show)
Exceptional, Collyer Bristow Gallery, London
2018
SEA(S) 2018, Ionion Centre for The Arts and Culture, Kefalonia
A Manifesto of Ecology, Phoenix Gallery, Athens
Three, HartsLane, London
Offsite, Safe House, London
One, Chelsea College of Arts, London
Snorkel, The Cookhouse, London