Hiraeth
21 Jul 2026 – 08 Aug 2026
“Hiraeth” is a Welsh term with no English equivalent, meaning to feel a keen nostalgia for a place or time that has disappeared, or perhaps never existed. More than homesickness, hiraeth contains the understanding that home is irretrievably lost to time or memory. Forged during a period of profound personal upheaval, Fairbairn’s paintings in Hiraeth provided her with a provisional sanctuary, even as they mirrored back an uneasy succession of changes in the artist’s life. Fairbairn clarifies that the work in Hiraeth was created during a time “when every structure I'd built my life around shifted,” and that her paintings “enact that disorientation rather than resolve it.”
Several paintings in Hiraeth “enact … disorientation” through a tense marriage of the disturbing and the picturesque: 'Many Doors on Acid Floors’ yellow ambience could equally read as luxuriant or noxious. 'If Home Becomes a Desert, I Will Green It' features scattered verdant sentinels, floating untethered, on a patchwork of deep, drought-stricken oranges. In each painting, beauty is accompanied by intentional dissonance: whether it’s a discombobulating depth of field, needle-like residual brush marks, ambiguous golden glazes. It’s as though Fairbairn’s reckoning with precarity and change, her understanding that no ground is truly stable, has enabled her to pull the sublime from what she finds deeply unsettling.
Every one of Fairbairn’s paintings in Hiraeth possesses its own discrete internal logic, conjuring its own spatial order. Each makes sense within the bounds of its own world. This is most apparent in the monumental 'Passage', its otherworldliness foregrounded by a glowing lunar spine. 'Infinite Regress', on the other hand, is less immediately legible: a ghostly white cipher is haloed by gold, and a sense of simultaneous loss and presence is built up through multiple layers of paint. Those who paint will know that painters often grapple with grief for what is lost, the attrition that occurs between the vision and the transcription. Painting means persevering while grieving the painting that never was. Fairbairn has, it seems, made this her material.
Natalie Mather
Ember FairbairnHomebody 2026oil on birchwood40 x 30 cm$1,500.00
Ember FairbairnTending to the Shadow 2026oil on birchwood40 x 30 cm$1,500.00
Ember FairbairnInfinite Regress 2026oil on dibond160 x 120 cm$8,500.00
Ember FairbairnMany doors on acid floors 2026oil on canvas160 x 120 cm$8,500.00
Ember FairbairnBorderspace Transgressions 1 2026oil on canvas160 x 120 cm$8,500.00
Ember FairbairnParts of the framework remain 2026oil on dibond160 x 120 cm$8,500.00
Ember FairbairnTo bend, writhe and rise with time 2026oil on dibond160 × 120 cm$8,500.00
Ember FairbairnIf home becomes a desert I will green it 2026oil on canvas180 × 150 cm$11,000.00
Ember FairbairnPassage 2026oil on canvas180 x 150 cm$11,000.00
Ember FairbairnIn this place I will rest awhile 2026oil on dibond, 2 panels120 x 220 cm●●
Ember FairbairnThe thought of a place 2026oil on board90 x 60 cm$4,000.00
Ember FairbairnA passing state 2026oil on board40 x 30 cm$1,500.00
Ember FairbairnA scar worn different 2026oil on board40 x 30 cm$1,500.00
Ember FairbairnInterior with yellow lines 2026oil on board40 x 30 cm$1,500.00
Ember FairbairnNest 2026oil on board42 × 30 cm●●
Ember FairbairnSee through 2026oil on board40 x 30 cm$1,500.00
Ember FairbairnStill here 2026oil on board40 x 30 cm$1,500.00
Ember FairbairnSuns align 2026oil on board40 x 28 cm$1,500.00
Ember FairbairnThe hourglass room 2026oil on board40 x 28 cm$1,500.00
Ember FairbairnTwo states 2026oil on board40 x 30 cm$1,500.00
Ember FairbairnWhere does the root go 2026oil on board40 x 30 cm$1,500.00
