I Knew You All Along

source: artspace

Though British artist Leo Fitzmaurice originally trained as a painter, upon completion of his fine arts education, he shifted his focus to found materials. Cigarette boxes, for instance, are repurposed into tiny sculptures and graphic installations are comprised of advertising fliers. Fitzmaurice presents such imaginatively revised everyday items within both the traditional exhibition context as well as in non-gallery situations. Among the various unconventional locales in which he has staged art interventions—he works closely and collaboratively with fellow artists—was a disused mental asylum.

Born in Shropshire, England, in 1963, Fitzmaurice attended Liverpool Polytechnic before earning his graduate degree from Manchester Metropolitan University. He has exhibited extensively since the mid-90s, including at New York’s White Columns and the Shanghai Biennial, among other institutions and galleries. Fitzmaurice was the winner of the 5th Northern Art Prize. He lives and works in Liverpool.
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source: northernartprizeorguk

Fitzmaurice’s work is characterised by a desire to reorganise the everyday and familiar. He re-presents our world to make us look again at what we take for granted. In his work there is often an instant recognition combined with a playful delight as the familiar is unsettled.

For The Way Things Appear (2011) sixty images are presented as an informal slide show framed within a specially built structure. Collected over the last seven years the sequence of images shows moments or encounters from Fitzmaurice’s everyday, urban landscape. Each image highlights an awkward disjuncture within the life of our material urban environment, often showing unlikely interactions between graphic design, objects and the landscape.

Horizon (Leeds), (2011) is made up from a selection of 19th and early 20th century landscape paintings chosen from Leeds Art Gallery’s collection. Fitzmaurice has installed the paintings to create a single painted horizon, forming a graphic line cutting across the ornate frames.

Leo Fitzmaurice was born in Shropshire in 1963 and studied in Liverpool and Manchester. His work has been included extensively in group exhibitions in the UK and internationally including; ‘The Way We Do art Now’, Tanya Leighton Gallery, Berlin (2010); ‘Undone’, Henry Moore Institute, Leeds (2010); ‘Good Riddance’, MOT, London (2008); ‘Flyersflagsheepself’, Seventeen Gallery, London (2009); ‘Niet Normaal’, De Beurs Van Berlag, Amsterdam (2010). He has most recently had solo shows at The New Art Gallery Walsall and Cube Manchester. Currently he is showing work in Chain Chain Chain, Bischoff Weiss, London, and working on a commission for the new London Hospital in Whitechapel, London. Fitzmaurice currently lives and works in The Wirral.