THorny issues From tattoos to tea roses, Graham Fagen has a unique

0 Comments | Sunday Herald, The, Dec 8, 2002 | by Andrew Burnet

Conceptual art is always going to struggle to make itself understood. It's not just the broadsides from such diverse cannons as culture minister Kim Howells and jailbird-turned-sculptor Jimmy Boyle. For conceptual artists, the question is often: how much to explain?

Take Graham Fagen's current show at the Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh. The first thing that greets the eye is a red neon motto reading "PUNK F***". This sits to one side of a yellow neon cross. On the other side, a blue neon motto reads "MUM DAD". The rest of the room is bare, save for a tiny card, giving the titles of these works: Punk F***, A Cross and Mum Dad. It's not a lot to go on.

Talk to Fagen, though, and he'll readily reveal the hidden significance of these works: they were inspired by a fad for home- made tattoos when he was a teenager in late-1970s Ayrshire.

"I'm interested in a dilemma about which icons are acceptable within our culture," he says. "The paradox of the cross tattoo is that people who had it weren't getting it for religious reasons. And the Mum Dad tattoo didn't mean that you were sissy; it meant that you were tough. And Punk F*** was one that the most extreme among my group had."

Fagen's serious-mindedness extends to the other two works in the show, to which he's given the title Love Is Lovely, War's Kinda Ugly - a line from a song by reggae singer U-Roy.

In part, Fagen is putting behind him a recent commission in Kosovo for the Imperial War Museum. But the title also refers to his video installation Radio Roselle.

This piece features the Owner Of Broadcasting, a flamboyant character from Fagen's award-winning photo-graphy series Owners.

These days, he's DJing for a pirate radio station, mixing up Burns songs with Jamaican reggae. Again, its origins can be traced to Fagen's school days.

"An annual event at primary school was learning a Burns poem to recite in front of the class," he says. "Then in secondary school, you're finding your own pieces of culture that are important to you. I caught the tail end of punk - and along with it came reggae.

"I was intrigued as to why Burns's language seemed alien - although it was mine - compared to reggae, which was the polar opposite of my cultural heritage.

"It seemed to have more meaning than Burns did. The rhythms of the reggae had more resonance to me than Burns's rhythms."

When Fagen learned that Burns planned to emigrate to Jamaica on a ship named the Roselle, the piece coalesced.

Fagen moves from Roselle to rosebush for the show's final piece, Where The Heart Is. The subject is a tea rose he acquired for a recent parks project in Royston, Glasgow. It's the latest in a long line of "plant" pieces - a strand of his work for which he's just received a Scottish Arts Council development grant worth (pounds) 15,000. (He is hatching some kind of "lexicon" but can't say yet what form it will take.) The bronze sculpture was cast from a newly-bred variety, named by a comm-unity poll, and reflects Fagen's fascination with nature versus nurture.

"The concept is about something that seems natural but if you research its background you discover that it's anything but natural; it's very much man-made and controlled."

It's also, he jokes, "to keep the traditionalists happy" - because it is a beautiful object. And that, in the end, requires no explanation at all.

Love Is Lovely, War's Kinda Ugly is at the Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, until January 11 www.fruitmarket.co.uk l Curator Katrina Brown on conceptual art: Seven Days