Angus Fairhurst, one of the group of "Young British Artists" who came out of London's Goldsmiths College, has died at age 41.

Spokeswoman Erica Bolton said Fairhurst committed suicide Saturday during a walk in a remote part of Scotland.

Angus Fairhurst, right, was one of the Young British Artists with friends Damien Hirst, left, and Sarah Lucas, shown in 2004.
(Fiona Hanson/Associated Press)

A contemporary of bad boy artist Damien Hirst, who attend Goldsmiths at the same time and a former partner and collaborator of Sarah Lucas, he was one of new generation of installation and conceptual artists who gained international recognition in the 1990s.

Fairhurst was known for installation, photography and video works, including an installation in which he rewired the phones of London art dealers so they could only talk to each other — a comment on the insular nature of the art world.

With other Young British Artists such as Hirst and Tracey Emin, he first exhibited in the 1988 exhibition Freeze.

Collector Charles Saatchi was a patron and he joined Hirst and Lucas in the 2004 In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida show at the Tate Britain.

Fairhurst "made some of the most engaging, witty and perceptive works of his generation and was an enormously influential friend of other British artists who came to prominence in the early '90s," said Tate director Nicholas Serota. "We shall all miss him greatly."

Although less well-known than some of his superstar contemporaries, Fairhurst was exhibited around the world, most recently at the Sadie Coles gallery in London in a show that closed the day before his death.

He was born in 1966 in Penbury in southern Britain and studied at Canterbury Art College before attending Goldsmiths, where he met Hirst.

Hirst remembered Fairhurst as "a great artist and a great friend."

"He always supported me, in fair weather and foul, he shone like the moon and as an artist he had just the right amount of slightly round the bend," Hirst said.

His work was included in Apocalypse at the Royal Academy, London in 2000. He had solo exhibitions at the Spacex Gallery in Exeter and the Kunsthalle, St Gallen, in Switzerland in 2001.

He was known for his series of bronze gorilla sculptures, including A Couple of Differences Between Thinking and Feeling II 2003 in which the gorilla is looking at its detached arm, and his collages of billboard advertisements with the figures and text removed.

Fairhurst is survived by his mother, Sally, and brother, Charles.

With files from the Associated Press