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Liam Gillick | |
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| Born | 1964 (age 60–61) Aylesbury,Buckinghamshire, England |
| Education | Goldsmiths |
| Known for | Conceptual art,installation art |
| Movement | Young British Artists Relational art |
| Website | www |
Liam Gillick (born 1964) is a British artist. In the 1990s he was one of the informalYoung British Artists group; like many of them, he took a degree infine art fromGoldsmiths' College, in London. He was among the artists included in theTraffic exhibition at theMusée d'art contemporain de Bordeaux inBordeaux in 1996, whereNicolas Bourriaud's concept ofrelationality was first proposed.[1] Gillick lives in New York.[2]
Liam Gillick graduated fromGoldsmiths College in 1987 with a degree infine art. In 1989 he mounted his first solo gallery exhibition,84 Diagrams, throughKarsten Schubert in London. Gillick has exhibited in galleries and institutions in Europe and the United States, many of which have been collaborative projects with other artists, architects, designers and writers.[citation needed]
In 1991, together with art collector, and co-publisher ofArt Monthly,Jack Wendler, Gillick founded the limited editions and publishing company G-W Press.[3] The company produced limited editions by artists includingJeremy Deller andAnya Gallaccio.
In the early 1990s Gillick was a member of the bandSoho and is credited with providing samples during their live performances.[citation needed]
Together withDamien Hirst,Sarah Lucas,Angela Bulloch andHenry Bond, he was "the earliest of the YBAs"[4] – theYoung British Artists who dominated British art during the 1990s.
Gillick was included in the 1996 exhibitionTraffic, curated by Nicholas Bourriaud, which first introduced the term Relational Aesthetics.[1]
In 2002, Gillick was selected to produce artworks for the canopy, the glass facade, the kiosks, the entrance ikon, and the vitrines, of the then-recently completedHome Office building, aUnited Kingdom government department, atMarsham Street, London.[5]
In 2002, Gillick was nominated for the annual BritishTurner Prize. In the Winter 2006 edition ofOctober (No. 115) Gillick's response to Claire Bishop'sOctober article "Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics", was published as "Contingent Factors: A Response to Claire Bishop's 'Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics'."
Gillick has contributed written articles to fine art journalsFrieze andArtforum.
In 2008, Gillick was short-listed for the Vincent Award of theStedelijk Museum Amsterdam. In 2009, Gillick represented Germany in theGiardini Pavilions of theVenice Biennale.[citation needed]
On 1 October 2010, in an open letter to the British Government's culture secretaryJeremy Hunt – co-signed by a further 27 previous Turner Prize nominees, and 19 winners—Gillick opposed any future cuts in public funding for the arts. In the letter the co-signatories described the arts in Britain as a "remarkable and fertile landscape of culture and creativity."[6]
In October 2010, Gillick contributed a recipe for avodka andlime juice-basedcocktail as his participation in theRyan Gander art project "Ryan's Bar". The beverage titled "Maybe it would be better if we worked in groups of two and a half," was sold for £50 per serving.[7]
In 2010, he composed a score of "zingy electronica" for the artists' filmBeijing, made by his ex-wife,Sarah Morris.[8][9]
In 2019, Gillick andNew Order released a new live album, "Σ(No,12k,Lg,17Mif)". The album was recorded live at the 2017Manchester International Festival. It features new renditions ofNew Order classics, as well as rarities that the band had not performed in years.[10]
Gillick's artistic output is characterized by diversity. As Caoimhin Mac Giolla Leith ofUniversity College Dublin has said,
"Gillick's practice to date has encompassed a wide range of media and activities (including sculpture, writing, architectural and graphic design, film, and music) as well as various critical and curatorial projects, his work as a whole is also marked by a fondness for diversions and distractions, tangents and evasions."[11]
The focus of Gillick' practice is evaluations of the aesthetics ofsocial systems with a focus onmodes of production rather than consumption.[12] He is interested in forms ofsocial organization. Through his own writings and the use of specific materials in his artworks, Gillick examines how the built world carries traces of social, political and economic systems.[13] As art critic Ina Blom has said,
"Artists such as Liam Gillick ... no longer addressabstraction as the principle for the creation of distinctminimalist objects, but rather try to create through design spaces for open social interaction [artworks] whose actual use is to be constantly redefined within the situation of the exhibition – without necessarily producing relational-aesthetic models of community."[14]
Central to Gillick's practice are the publications that function in parallel to his artworks. An anthology of these "Allbooks" was published by Book Works, in 2009.
Between 1990 and 1994, Gillick collaborated with artistHenry Bond on theirDocuments Series, a group of 83 fine art works which appropriated themodus operandi of a news gathering team, in order to producerelational art.[15] In order to make the work, the duo posed as a news reporting team—i.e., a photographer and a journalist—often attending events scheduled in thePress Association'sGazette – a list of potentially newsworthy events in London. Bond worked as if a typicalphotojournalist, joining the other press photographers present; whilst Gillick operated as the journalist, first collecting the ubiquitouspress kit before preparing his audio recording device.[15]
The series was first shown commercially in 1991, atKarsten Schubert Limited[16] and then, in 1992, atMaureen Paley's Interim Art[17] —two of the galleries that were pioneers in the development of theYBA art movement. The series was subsequently exhibited atTate Modern in the showCentury City held in 2001,[18] and at theHayward Gallery in the exhibitionHow to Improve the World, in 2006.[19]
Major solo exhibitions includeLiam Gillick: Annlee You Proposes atTate Modern, London, 2001–2002;[20]The Wood Way atWhitechapel Gallery in London 2002;Projects 79: Liam Gillick, Literally at theMuseum of Modern Art, New York, 2003;[21] A short text on the possibility of creating an economy of equivalence atPalais de Tokyo, Paris, 2005; and the retrospective projectLiam Gillick: Three perspectives and a short scenario 2008–2010, which toured theKunsthalle Zürich, theWitte de With in Rotterdam,Kunstverein München, and theMuseum of Contemporary Art, Chicago.[22][23] The U.S. presentation of the exhibition was the most comprehensive of Gillick's work in an American museum. Accompanying his solo exhibition at the MCA was the showThe one hundred and sixty-third floor: Liam Gillick Curates the Collection, curated by Gillick from the MCA collection.[24] In 2016, Gillick presented a solo exhibition, titledCampaign atSerralves Museum of Contemporary Art, Porto.[25]
Gillick serves on the board ofArtists Space.[26] AlongsideIngrid Schaffner,Tirdad Zolghadr and others, Gillick is a member of the Graduate Committee of theCenter for Curatorial Studies and Art in Contemporary Culture atBard College,Annandale-on-Hudson, New York.[27] He has been on the faculty ofColumbia University School of the Arts in New York City since 1997.[28] Since 2017, he has been a founding member of The American Friends of the ICA, a support group for theInstitute of Contemporary Arts (ICA).[29]
In 2018, Gillick was a member of the jury that selectedKapwani Kiwanga for theFrieze Artist Award.[30]
Gillick is represented in the UK byMaureen Paley, in the US byCasey Kaplan, and in Ireland byKerlin Gallery.
Gillick is cousin to British artistsJames and Theodore Gillick. He was married to artistSarah Morris in 1998 at a ceremony in Miami.[31] They divorced in 2012.[8] In July 2024, Gillick married independent curator Piper Marshall[32] in a ceremony on the North Fork of Long Island.[33][34] Other relatives include sculptorErnest Gillick,medallionistMary Gillick, andanti-abortion activistVictoria Gillick.[citation needed]
