Nicky Coutts

18 holes with Fanny is a series of drawings made while on a Kultur Steiermark International Fellowship in Graz, Austria. They are of Nick Faldo’s professional golf caddie Fanny Sunesson who Coutts appears to have stalked from hotel to hotel and around a complete 18 hole course across Europe. While in Graz, Coutts took lessons in method acting in which she practised occupying the persona of an obsessed teenage fan. Each drawing of Fanny is clearly based on a press image or paparazzi photographic snap on coloured hotel notepaper. Sunesson is imaged stooped under the heavy weight of Faldo’s bag, offering a club, crouching near a hole, cap or sunglass wearing and smiling. She was the first woman caddie to win a major male golf championship in an unusual role within sport as caddies are both responsible for bag carrying around the course for their golfer but also making crucial coaching decisions on, for example, yardage to a hole or the use of a particular club. Coutts’ work questions both her authorship as sole artist (as she is working with a persona) and Fanny’s role within sport (as she too is part of an ambiguous duo).