The Times Obituary

A founder member of the Young British Artists group has sent shockwaves through the art world by committing suicide.

Angus Fairhurst, 41, is believed to have taken his life on Saturday while on a remote walk in Scotland. His body was found in woodland near Inveroran cottage in Bridge of Orchy.

He was thought to have been depressed, although friends did not detect anything was wrong at a recent dinner to celebrate his latest show of new work.

A spokesperson for Strathclyde police said: “A post-mortem will be carried out to establish the cause of death. However, at this time, there appear to be no suspicious circumstances.”

Damien Hirst, the animal pickler and the most notorious of the YBAs, paid tribute to him yesterday, describing him as “a great artist and a great friend”.

He added: “He always supported me, in fair weather and foul, he shone like the moon and as an artist he had just the right amount of slightly round the bend. I loved him.”

Another YBA, Sarah Lucas, whose works have included placing a giant penis made of cigarettes next to an image of girl’s legs, said: “Angus was a lovely man. Funny and kind. Very much loved by all his friends. Very much loved by me.”

It was in studying art in the 1980s at Goldsmiths College that Fairhurst formed a lasting friendship with other students, including Hirst and Lucas.

He was instrumental in organising the seminal Freeze exhibition in 1988 in which the work of this key generation of British artists was first launched. Patronage by Charles Saatchi and intense media attention brought riches and fame to several of the group, notably Hirst and Tracey Emin.

Fairhurst had a lower profile, but his works were exhibited around the world.

Four years ago, he created One Year of the News in which the front pages of The Times and other newspapers were copied and superimposed to become unreadable. The images, through which words such as “Iraqi” emerged, were spread across a wall at Tate Britain in an exhibition titled “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida”.

His Mnemonic Table involved him doing no more than lay out a few pots of ivy and honeysuckle in no apparent order, while Pieta depicted a nude figure in the arms of a gorilla, aping the pose of the dead Christ in the arms of Mary in Michelangelo’s sculpture. In another work, he recorded bank employees answering the phone.

Further tributes came from Sir Nicholas Serota, Director of the Tate, who said: “Angus Fairhurst was always deprecating about his own talent, but he made some of the most engaging, witty and perceptive works of his generation and was an enormously influential friend of other British artists who came to prominence in the early nineties. We shall all miss him greatly.”

Stephen Deuchar, Director of Tate Britain, said: “Angus’s death is tragic loss to British art. He was a brilliantly inventive, witty and provocative artist, always modest about his fundamentally important contribution to the soaring international reputation of British art since the 1990s.”

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