Fight Club

Harrington had previously explored the figure of warrior in his 2012 print Belfast Warrior, depicting an ambiguous figure that hovers between the violence associated with the act of sword fighting and lightness of the dancer’s movement. Here, the duel that comes to the fore in the print is much more pronounced in its vehement undertone. In contrast to Belfast Warrior, the background surrounding the two men is not neutral. A blue United Nations flag appears in the background alongside a red flag. The blue and red flags were key to Harrington’s engagement with the idea of patriotism in his 2018 exhibition The Story of Us and Them and here they signalise the sense of division arising from the differing national sentiments.

Emphasising the mundane suffering, the presence of dead animal bodies on the left side of the print encapsulates Harrington’s acute examination of modern life, its power dynamics, and paradoxes. The artist commented in the context of questions that drive his art: "I'm interested in empire and cycles of power and how we're seeing a shift away from European dominance. I'm also interested in how today's culture is obsessed with consumerism so the dead animals in these paintings are a metaphor for waste and excess."