Dan Fern / …sometime, never
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Opening Hours: Monday – Friday, 9.45am – 6pm Saturday 9.45am – Midday
This new collection of work by Dan Fern highlights again the artist’s love of material - texture, form and colour applied with characteristic skill and judgement. Produced in his studios in London and France during the dangerous and unpredictable period overshadowed by the covid pandemic, the title - taken from the saying ‘this year, next year, sometime, never’ reflects on a period of interrupted plans, cancelled arrangements, disruption, uncertainty and frustration. The projects on show include pieces made in Fern’s long-standing medium of choice - paper collage - alongside recent works in textile, a new medium for the artist, and touch on his passion for travel, particularly in the Far East, for music, for language, for maps and books, and for his life-long love of mountains.
Dan Fern is an award-winning graphic artist and an influential teacher. A graduate of the Royal College of Art in London, Fern has worked extensively across all areas of visual communication; his commissioned graphic works have been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in Kyoto, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum, the Joan Miró Foundation in Barcelona, the Smithsonian Institute in New York and London’s Victoria and Albert Museum.
Dan Fern started teaching at the Royal College of Art as a part-time lecturer in the 1970’s, going on to become Head of the School of Communications in 1994. After retiring in 2010 he was made Professor Emeritus, and retains his links with education as a lecturer and research supervisor. Throughout his long academic career Fern has been a lecturer, external examiner, research supervisor and/or academic consultant at more than 50 colleges and universities of art and design throughout the UK, USA, Europe, China and Japan. He was Chair of the RCA’s International Advisory Group from 2000 - 2010. In recent years he was made a Fellow of Munich University following a successful teaching residency there in 2014; a similar residency at Konstfack in Stockholm followed in 2017, and in the same year Fern was invited to join the international advisory panel at Tsinghua University in Beijing.
Since the mid 90’s Dan Fern has also worked in video, producing films in collaboration with musicians for performance at the South Bank Centre in London, the Bath International Music Festival, the City of London Festival and the Hamburg Philharmonie.
Alongside his successful career as a commercial graphic artist, Fern has regularly exhibited non-commissioned, self-authored work in galleries in London and overseas.
With a long-standing interest in mountaineering, Dan Fern’s work as an artist and film-maker for the past 10 years has been focused on the landscape of the Vercors region of south-east France, where he has a studio.