安格斯．費爾赫斯特1966年出生於英國肯特郡，在坎特伯利藝術學院修讀一年後，便於1989年入讀倫敦金匠學院，期間跟達明安•赫斯特成為好友。1988年兩人合作構思和策劃了影響深遠的創意展覽「凝」。
費爾赫斯特的作品形式多樣，從雕塑到錄像以至繪畫都有，作品帶挑釁性，表現別具一格的幽默風趣。費爾赫斯特十分重視過程，一貫主張建構是凌駕於意向的創作方法。多年來，他創作了不少擬人繪圖，作品經常出現大猩猩的形象。猩猩的可取之處，在於達爾文進化論的觀點—牠可以替代人類，幾乎擁有人的形象卻沒有人格的塑造。在費爾赫斯特的繪圖中，猩猩打扮會被解開並露出內裡的東西，比如是一條小魚之類。當這些私人繪畫被公開展出時，就會為猩猩形象帶來生命，成為藝術家的第二個自我。錄像《一套廉價不合身的猩猩裝》(1995)拍攝了藝術家穿著一套猩猩裝發狂地上竄下跳的情況，隨後猩猩裝開始撕裂分解，內裡填塞的報紙脫落，直至藝術家全身裸露為止，而這時所有的幻象亦告煙消雲散。
青銅雕塑《思想和感覺之間的幾個區別II》(2003)描述了一隻猩猩盯著那只躺在地板上的斷臂，彷彿在思考：「它真是我的嗎？那真是我嗎？」在費爾赫斯特的作品裡，身體可能是脆弱內在的強力保護，或是令人失望的牢籠，而後者往往更為普遍。
費爾赫斯特曾參予不少重要展覽，包括與達明安•赫斯特以及莎拉．盧卡斯等合作的「In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida」(泰特英國美術館，倫敦，2004)；「閃耀！倫敦新藝術」(沃爾克藝術中心，明尼阿坡里斯，1995)。2008年，費爾赫斯特在莎迪．科爾斯畫廊的作品展，不幸地成為這位藝術家生前最後一次展覽。就在展出即將完結之際，費爾赫斯特結束了自己的生命。其主要作品回顧展於布里斯托的阿爾諾菲尼藝術中心(2009)以及比利時的魯汶美術館(2010)舉行。
Angus Fairhurst was born in Kent in 1966 and studied at Canterbury Art College for one year before attending Goldsmiths College in London in 1989, where he formed a close friendship with Damien Hirst. Together they conceived and organised the seminal exhibition Freeze in 1988.
Working across a wide range of media from sculpture to video to painting, Fairhurst’s works display his idiosyncratic humour in inventive and provocative ways. Process also played a central role in his work and he consistently adhered to structure as a means of subjugating intentionality to the action of making. The artist had been engaged for some years in producing a series of anthropomorphic drawings, often using the figure of a gorilla engaged in a narrative cycle. The gorilla's appeal is that it can stand in for the human figure in a Darwinian sense, possessing near human form, but does away with the need for characterisation. In Fairhurst’s drawings, a gorilla suit would open up to reveal, for example, a little fish inside. When these essentially private drawings finally began to be shown, the gorilla image was brought to life and adopted by the artist as a form of alter ego. A series of actions in the video A Cheap and Ill-fitting Gorilla Suit (1995) shows the artist in a gorilla suit jumping up and down maniacally. The suit begins to disintegrate, shedding newspaper stuffing in the process, until the artist is revealed naked and all sense of illusion dispelled.
In a bronze sculpture, A Couple of Differences Between Thinking and Feeling II (2003), a gorilla stares at its arm, which lies severed on the floor. It looks as though it is thinking “Is that really mine? Is that really me?” Thus the body in Fairhurst’s work is represented either as a kind of strong protection for the slippery fragile thing inside, or, more commonly, as a disappointing prison.
His work featured in numerous landmark shows including In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida with Damien Hirst and Sarah Lucas, Tate Britain, London, 2004 and Brilliant! New Art from London, Walker Art Centre, Minneapolis, 1995. In 2008, a showing of new work at Sadie Coles Gallery was sadly to be his last as a living artist as shortly before the closing of the exhibition, Fairhurst tragically took his own life. A major retrospective exhibition of Fairhurst’s work has since been shown at Arnolfini, Bristol, 2009 and M Museum Leuven, Belgium in 2010.