SEAN ALEXANDER FISHER
SEAN ALEXANDER FISHER
INFORMATION
Sean Fisher is a Scottish artist and mechanical engineer working across film, sculpture and performance. His practice explores the place of engineering and technology within culture, using humour and absurdity to examine persistence, obsession and repetition, while questioning ideas of efficiency, usefulness and technological progress.
He describes his approach as “pataphysical engineering”: engineering for imaginary solutions, where engineering becomes a critical and narrative method rather than simply a way of solving problems.
Fisher holds a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from Robert Gordon University and a master’s degree in Product Design Engineering from the Glasgow School of Art and the University of Glasgow, before completing a second master’s degree in Contextual Design at Design Academy Eindhoven with support from a Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 Scholarship. His practice has since received support from Amarte Fonds, Het Cultuurfonds, the Visual Artist and Craft Maker Awards (VACMA) and Stichting Cultuur Eindhoven. He has undertaken funded residencies at Spazju Kreattiv in Malta, Make Eindhoven and VARES in Estonia, with work shown through exhibitions, performances and screenings in the UK, the Netherlands, Malta and Germany. Alongside his practice, Fisher teaches at Edinburgh College of Art and works between Scotland and continental Europe. His work will be presented at the University of Salford as part of Sustainable Darkroom’s Seeds of Change in October 2026.
A traveller arrives in Malta to settle an old debt, believing that once repaid, he will be free. But the sea has other plans. Before he can reach his destination, his boat’s engine fails, leading him to Mario Bezzina. As he repairs the engine, Mario speaks not just of machines but of a changing Valletta, a city once built by makers, now reshaped by gentrification. With his boat restored, the traveller continues his journey to repay Carmelo Richie, the car mechanic who once fixed his Suzuki Samurai. Like an old car, Carmelo has been in and out of the workshop, hospitals replacing garages, doctors taking the place of mechanics, each repair leaving its mark. Debt settled, the traveller sets out to sea. But as the engine hums beneath him, a quiet truth lingers. Mario Bezzina asked for nothing yet gave him something invaluable. And so, a new debt is born.
