Liam Gillick was born in Aylesbury, UK in 1964. Originally hoping to work for the labour movement, Gillick studied Fine Art at Goldsmiths College, University of London, initially as a way to ‘kill time’ after his intended course was cancelled.

Gillick's work is diverse and often collaborative, encompassing installation, architecture, product design, computer programming, signage, photography, drawing, film-making, fashion design, writing, and curatorial projects; though he is arguably most famous for his aluminium and multi-coloured Plexiglas sculptures, which operate as places of discussion and social negotiation within wider investigations of consensus, social organisation and utopia in his work.

Gillick was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2002 in recognition of his solo exhibition The Wood Way at the Whitechapel Art Gallery and for his outdoor installation Annlee You Proposes at Tate Britain.

In 2009 Gillick represented Germany at the 53rd Venice Biennale of Art.

Gillick has exhibited at Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, 2012; Museum Stzuki, Lodz, Poland, 2011; Kunst-und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Bonn, Germany, 2010; Kunsthalle Zürich, Zürich, 2008, travelling to Witte de With Centre for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam, The Netherlands, 2008; Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France, 2005. Selected group exhibitions include MuHKA, Antwerp, Belgium, 2011; 8th Shanghai Biennale, Shanghai, China, 2010; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, 2009; and Guggenheim Museum, New York, 2007.

Liam Gillick lives and works in New York, USA. 

Glossary

  • Contemporary

    Existing or coming into being at the same period; of today or of the present. The term that designates art being made today.

  • Design

    The arrangement of elements or details in an artefact or a work of art.

  • Drawing

    The depiction of shapes and forms on a flat surface chiefly by means of lines although colour and shading may also be included. Materials most commonly used are pencil, ink, crayon, charcoal, chalk and pastel, although other materials, including paint, can be used in combination.

  • Installation

    An artwork comprised of many and various elements of miscellaneous materials (see mixed media), light and sound, which is conceived for and occupies an entire space, gallery or site. The viewer can often enter or walk around the installation. Installations may only exist as long as they are installed, but can be re-created in different sites. Installation art emerged in the 1960s out of Environmental Art (works of art which are three-dimensional environments), but it was not until the 1970s that the term came into common use and not until the late 1980s that artists started to specialise in this kind of work, creating a genre of ‘Installation Art’. The term can also be applied to the arrangement of selected art works in an exhibition.

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