Dark absurdity: Re-reading the work of Gordon Froud

In this article my aim is to deepen, expand and indeed question the associations with which, I argue, Froud's thirty-year output seems to have become too easily and comfortably categorised. This is done through a close analysis of selected artworks exhibited on his recent exhibitions titled ‘A retrospective of exhibitions I never had’. Building upon a 2003 review by Carine Zaayman in which she evaluates Froud's work as a joining of the weighty, dirty concerns of the real world within the sterilised space of the art gallery, I argue for a re-reading of the selected works in an attempt to reveal Froud's deeper, more critical and cynical eye. Through a lens of black humour, a gendered, filmic, comparative and literary re-reading explores a zone of discomfort and dark absurdity at play across all facets of his diverse output.