Angus Fairhurst (1966-2008)

The Gorilla, part cartoon, part naturalistic, has been used by Fairhurst in many media and formats, as a metaphor for a dawning human self-consciousness; that moment where free thought takes over from instinct and where abstraction and its fascination takes over in the mind.

The casting of this sculpture in silver actually happened accidentally -- the foundry pouring silver instead of bronze into the mould -- with the end result emphasising so beautifully the difference between the polished snake form and the fingerprint details of the modelling, even more successfully than in the bronze edition. Appropriated as a happy accident, it was made into an edition of its own.