Boyd Webb (born 1947) is a New Zealand-born visual artist who works in the United Kingdom, mainly using the medium of photography although he has also produced sculpture and film. He was shortlisted for the

Turner Prize The Turner Prize, named after the English painter J. M. W. Turner, is an annual prize presented to a British visual artist. Between 1991 and 2016, only artists under the age of 50 were eligible (this restriction was removed for the 2017 award) ...

in 1988. He has had solo shows at venues including the

Hirshhorn Museum The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden is an art museum beside the National Mall, in Washington, D.C., the United States. The museum was initially endowed during the 1960s with the permanent art collection of Joseph H. Hirshhorn. It was desi ...

, Washington D.C. and

Whitechapel Art Gallery The Whitechapel Gallery is a public art gallery in Whitechapel on the north side of Whitechapel High Street, in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. The original building, designed by Charles Harrison Townsend, opened in 1901 as one of the ...

, London.

Life

He was born in New Zealand in 1947 and attended at the Ilam School of Art in

Christchurch Christchurch ( ; mi, Ōtautahi) is the largest city in the South Island of New Zealand and the seat of the Canterbury Region. Christchurch lies on the South Island's east coast, just north of Banks Peninsula on Pegasus Bay. The Avon Rive ...

, then came to the UK and studied sculpture at the

Royal College of Art The Royal College of Art (RCA) is a public research university in London, United Kingdom, with campuses in South Kensington, Battersea and White City. It is the only entirely postgraduate art and design university in the United Kingdom. It o ...

, London from 1972 to 1975. He currently lives and works in Brighton, East Sussex, UK.

Art

Initially he worked as a sculptor, making fibreglass forms. However he soon switched to photography, developing a practice based around constructing tableaux which he then photographs. His work has been cited as a major influence on the famous, long-running advertising campaigns by

Silk Cut Silk Cut is a British brand of cigarettes, currently owned and manufactured by Gallaher Group, a division of Japan Tobacco. The packaging is characterised by a distinctive stark white packet with the brand name in a purple, blue, red, silver, wh ...

and

Benson and Hedges Benson & Hedges is a British brand of cigarettes owned by American conglomerate Altria. Cigarettes under the ''Benson & Hedges'' name are manufactured worldwide by different companies such as Rothmans, Benson & Hedges, Philip Morris USA, British ...

. Holly Arden described his art thus: "Many of them are shot in studio sets using man-made props to represent natural objects. Men, women and plastic animals adopt Monty Pythonesque poses against landscapes of plastic and carpet. The images have a literal quality, where Webb seems to go out of his way to show how they are constructed. Yet, they also pose bafflingly complex oppositions/connections between ideas of language and meaning, object and environment, scale and detail." Arden divides his art into three periods. The first, from the 1970s, is about "man's need to classify and analyse", and tends to combine text and image. In the 1980s he focused more on photographing installations, combining the large and the small in a harmonious relationship. Following that, in the 1990s, his works became more "scientific" and took greater effort to hide their construction, so it becomes hard to see how they are made. Later he also moved into film, with ''Horse and Dog'' shown at the

Estorick Collection The Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art is a museum in Canonbury Square in the district of Islington on the northern fringes of central London. It is the United Kingdom's only gallery devoted to modern Italian art and is a registered ch ...

in London in 2003. The film features a fox and a horse (a person in a fox costume and two people in a

pantomime horse A pantomime horse is a theatrical representation of a horse or other quadruped by two actors in a single costume who cooperate and synchronize their movements. One actor plays the front end, including the horse's head and its front legs, in a mor ...

-style outfit) wandering English fields with suitcases and later pitching a tent.

Adrian Searle Adrian Searle (born 1953 in Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire) is the chief art critic of ''The Guardian'' newspaper in Britain, and has been writing for the paper since 1996. Previously he was a painter. Life and career Searle studied at the St ...

found it obscure, lacking either in drama or pathos, comparing it unfavourably to the work of

Matthew Barney Matthew Barney (born March 25, 1967) is an American contemporary artist and film director who works in the fields of sculpture, film, photography and drawing. His works explore connections among geography, biology, geology and mythology as well ...

Paul McCarthy Paul McCarthy (born August 4, 1945) is a contemporary artist who lives and works in Los Angeles, California. Life McCarthy was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, in 1945. He studied art at Weber State University in Ogden, Utah, and later continued ...

, and Peter Fischli & David Weiss.

Exhibitions

Solo shows: *

, London 1978 * Whitechapel Art Gallery, 1987 * ''Directions'',

, Washington DC, 1990 * ''Boyd Webb'', Brighton City Art Gallery and touring, 1994. * Auckland Art Gallery and touring, 1997 Horse & Dog, Milton Keynes Gallery, 2002. Other: * At the Sydney Biennale in 1995, representing New Zealand

Bibliography

* Louise Garrett, "The Contrary Vernacular of Boyd Webb", Art New Zealand, June 1998. * Jenny Harper, "Unruly Truths", in ''Boyd Webb'', exhibition catalogue, Auckland Art Gallery, 1997. * S. Morgan, essay, in ''Boyd Webb'', exhibition catalogue, London: Whitechapel Art Gallery, 1987.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Webb, Boyd New Zealand artists Alumni of the Royal College of Art 1947 births Living people People associated with the Canterbury Society of Arts