Ed Fornieles – London Has Fallen
In early 2015, Ed Fornieles created an avatar fox, a cartoon that he described as at once “lovable and easy to recognize whilst facilitating an exploration into the sometimes dark side of things”.
Fornieles originally utilised the Fox as a protagonist in a series of social media narratives alongside cartoons of friends Dean Kissick, depicted as a blue platypus, and artist Amalia Ulman illustrated as a cat.
These narratives took place at first in banal and local surroundings familiar to East London, scenes such as exiting Bethnal Green Tube Station in the rain seemingly depicted a reality, albeit with the platypus and fox avatars in place of their human counterparts.
Later the same year, Fornieles started creating physical work using the avatars within a range of environments, now ranging from the banal to the comedic, reality and fantasy. London Has Fallen is a series of cartoons on acrylic and watercolour paper mounted on Dibond that depict the characters within iconic London scenes, including beside a red telephone box and in a crowd of commuters.
The title of the series seems to be taken from an American action thriller London Has Fallen, which began filming in London in 2014 and follows a plot to assassinate G7 world leaders, coupled with another film titled: The Good Dinosaur, a computer-animated adventure film released the same year as the artwork.
Ed Fornieles’ London Has Fallen: The Good Dinosaur, 2015, shows the fox, cat, and platypus looking stressed having seemingly become some of Shoreditch’s most imposing pieces of architecture. Ed himself in the foreground seems to have become the ‘Gherkin’, the nickname of 30 St Mary Axe, which looms over Liverpool Street Station and is visible from across the city.
The proximity of Shoreditch Arts Club to Fornieles’ studio and this architectural icon, made it an obvious choice as one of the first works to exhibit at the club, which itself has a founding relationship to architectural practice.
The work itself captures a time when social media and the square image format were at their peak of influence within the social landscape. The architectural topography in the scene has also changed dramatically since, together showing how quickly both digital and physical environments change. Is this why the cartoon characters seem anxious?
Ed Fornieles (British, 1983) is closely associated with the post-internet art movement. His work collapses distinctions between the online and the offline worlds, fact and fiction, working through a range of mediums including web-based art, sculpture and performance. Recently Fornieles has been dedicating his time to the Finiliar project, “living NFTs that use oracles to respond to fluctuations in the value of cryptocurrencies.”
We are honoured to have Fornieles as a member of the Shoreditch Arts Club, along with his London gallerists Carlos / Ishikawa.
Ed Fornieles, London Has Fallen: The Good Dinosaur, 2015
Cartoons on acrylic and watercolour paper mounted on Dibond, aluminium frame 90 × 90 × 5 cm
Ed Fornieles, London Has Fallen: Black Mass, 2015
Cartoons on acrylic and watercolour paper mounted on Dibond, aluminium frame 90 × 90 × 5 cm
The work will be on display from 26 January - 2 April 2023. To view the work, become a member or book a viewing. For more information about this work or the artist please contact Carlos / Ishikawa.
