Flying Finn

Some people hate pigeons. "Flying rats!" they say indignantly while shooshing them away from park benches, statues and river banks. Not so artist Finn Fair who rather charmingly describes them as "a proud, heroic icon of the downtrodden and disenfranchised" and has incorporated the winged creatures into his recent body of work Shine On Dirt. The artist sees a parallel between pigeons and the under class and says the work draws on this parallel and celebrates his "friends, the artists, musicians, labourers, workers, beneficiaries, the ill, the eccentrics and misfits." Shine On Dirt is "an obvious sign of adoration for the beautiful personalities I have surrounded myself with." As long time fans of the outsider, we can only agree.

Shine On Dirt opens at the COCA gallery in Christchurch on September 22.