Liam Gillick (born 1964, Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire) is a British artist who lives and works in New York City. Gillick deploys multiple forms to make visible the aesthetics of the constructed world and examine the ideological control systems that have emerged along with globalization and neoliberalism. He utilizes materials that resemble everyday built environments, transforming them into minimalist abstractions that deliver commentaries on social constructs, while also exploring notions of modernism.
Life and career
Liam Gillick graduated from Goldsmiths College in 1987 with a degree in fine art. In 1989 he mounted his first solo gallery exhibition, 84 Diagrams, through Karsten 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.
In 1991, together with art collector, and co-publisher of Art Monthly, Jack Wendler, Gillick founded the limited editions and publishing company G-W Press. The company produced limited editions by artists including Jeremy Deller and Anya Gallaccio.
In the early 1990s Gillick was a member of the band Soho and is credited with providing samples during their live performances.
Together with Damien Hirst, Sarah Lucas, Angela Bulloch and Henry Bond, he was "the earliest of the YBAs" — the Young British Artists who dominated British art during the 1990s.
Gillick was included in the 1996 exhibition Traffic, curated by Nicholas Bourriaud, which first introduced the term Relational Aesthetics.
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 completed Home Office building, a United Kingdom government department, at Marsham Street, London.
In 2002, Gillick was nominated for the annual British Turner Prize. In the Winter 2006 edition of October (No. 115) Gillick's response to Claire Bishop's October 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 journals Frieze and Artforum.
In 2008, Gillick was short-listed for the Vincent Award of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. In 2009, Gillick represented Germany in the Giardini Pavilions of the Venice Biennale.
On 1 October 2010, in an open letter to the British Government's culture secretary Jeremy 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 cosignatories described the arts in Britain as a "remarkable and fertile landscape of culture and creativity."
In October 2010, Gillick contributed a recipe for a vodka and lime juice-based cocktail as his participation in the Ryan 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.
In 2010, he composed a score of "zingy electronica" for the artists' film Beijing, made by his ex-wife, Sarah Morris.
In 2019, Gillick and New Order (band) released a new live album. The album, titled "?(No,12k,Lg,17Mif)", was recorded live at the 2017 Manchester International Festival. It features new renditions of New Order (band) classics, as well as rarities that the band had not performed in years.
Artistic practice
Gillick's artistic output is characterized by diversity. As Caoimhin Mac Giolla Leith of University 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."
The focus of Gillick' practice is evaluations of the aesthetics of social systems with a focus on modes of production rather than consumption. He is interested in forms of social 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. As art critic Ina Blom has said,