Richard Wilson (born 24 May 1953) is an English sculptor, installation artist and musician.

Biography

Born in

Islington Islington () is a district in the north of Greater London, England, and part of the London Borough of Islington. It is a mainly residential district of Inner London, extending from Islington's High Street to Highbury Fields, encompassing the ar ...

, London, Wilson studied at the London College of Printing, Hornsey College of Art and Reading University. He was the DAAD resident in Berlin in 1992, Maeda Visiting Artist at the Architectural Association in 1998 and nominated for the Turner Prize in both 1988 (when

Tony Cragg Sir Anthony Douglas Cragg (born Liverpool 9 April 1949) is an Anglo-German sculptor, resident in Wuppertal, Germany since 1977. Early life and training Tony Cragg was born in Liverpool."Tony Cragg." ''Contemporary Artists''. Farmington Hills, ...

won) and 1989 (when Richard Long won). Wilson's first solo show was ''11 Pieces'', at the Coracle Press Gallery in London in 1976. Since then he has had at least 50 solo exhibitions around the world. He formed the

Bow Gamelan Ensemble The Bow Gamelan Ensemble was a group of musicians in Bow, London, England, who used elements of gamelan music. Formed in 1983 by Richard Wilson with Paul Burwell and Anne Bean, the group disbanded in 1990., ''AnneBean.net''. The ensemble created ...

in 1983 with

Anne Bean Anne Bean (born 1950) is a London-based artist who works in installation, large-scale sculpture, sound art, and performance art. She was born in Livingstone in Northern Rhodesia (now Maramba, Zambia). She lives in Limehouse in the East End of Lo ...

and

Paul Burwell Paul Dean Burwell (24 April 1949 – 4 February 2007) was a British thaumaturge and percussionist, influential in the fields of free improvisation and experimental art. Born in Ruislip, he studied at Ealing Art College and in the workshops organi ...

. Wilson's work is characterised by architectural concerns with volume, illusionary spaces and auditory perception. His most famous work ''20:50'', a room of specific proportions, part-filled with highly reflective used sump oil creating an illusion of the room turned upside down was first exhibited at

Matt's Gallery Matt's Gallery is a contemporary art gallery currently located in Nine Elms at 6 Charles Clowes Walk, London, SW11 7AN. Its director, Robin Klassnik OBE, opened the gallery in 1979 in his studio on Martello Street, before moving premises to Coppe ...

, London in 1987, became one of the signature pieces of the Saatchi Gallery. It is considered to be a defining work in the genre of site-specific installation art. The same year the temporary (May–June) installation ''One Piece at a Time'' filled the south tower of the Tyne Bridge at

Newcastle-upon-Tyne Newcastle upon Tyne ( RP: , ), or simply Newcastle, is a city and metropolitan borough in Tyne and Wear, England. The city is located on the River Tyne's northern bank and forms the largest part of the Tyneside built-up area. Newcastle is als ...

. In the 1990s and 21st century, Wilson continued to work on a large scale to fulfil his ambitions to "tweak or undo or change the interiors of space... in that way unsettle or break peoples preconceptions of space, what they think space might be", including an installation near London's

Millennium Dome The Millennium Dome was the original name of the large dome-shaped building on the Greenwich Peninsula in South East (London sub region), South East London, England, which housed a major exhibition celebrating the beginning of the third millenn ...

called ''

A Slice of Reality ''A Slice of Reality'' is a work of modern art by Richard Wilson sitting by (and commissioned for) the Millennium Dome on the north-western bank of the Greenwich Peninsula. It consists of a sliced vertical section through the former 800-ton ...

'' in 2000. It consisted of a portion (15%) of a ship being sliced off from the rest and mounted on the river bed. In 2007, Wilson installed ''Turning the Place Over'' in a building in Liverpool's city centre. Described by Liverpool Biennial organisers as his "most radical intervention into architecture to date", Wilson cut an 8-metre diameter disc from the walls and windows of the building, and attached it to a motor which literally turned this section of the building inside out, in a cycle lasting just over two minutes. It was switched off in 2011. In 2009, Wilson's architectural intervention, ''Square the Block'', was installed on the northwest exterior of the London School of Economics (LSE)'s New Academic Building at the corner of Kingsway and Sardinia Street. Commissioned by the LSE and curated by the Contemporary Art Society, Square the Block is an outdoor sculpture that both mimics and subtly subverts the existing façade of the building. In 2012 the installation ''Hang On A Minute Lads, I've Got a Great Idea'' recreated the closing scene of the film '' The Italian Job'' on the roof of the

De La Warr Pavilion The De La Warr Pavilion is a grade I listed building, located on the seafront at Bexhill on Sea, East Sussex, on the south coast of England. The Modernist and International Style building was designed by the architects Erich Mendelsohn and Ser ...

Bexhill-on-Sea Bexhill-on-Sea (often shortened to Bexhill) is a seaside town and civil parish situated in the county of East Sussex in South East England. An ancient town and part of the local government district of Rother, Bexhill is home to a number of arc ...

. Wilson was commissioned to create '' Slipstream'', to be installed in the rebuilt Terminal 2 building at

Heathrow Airport Heathrow Airport (), called ''London Airport'' until 1966 and now known as London Heathrow , is a major international airport in London, England. It is the largest of the six international airports in the London airport system (the others be ...

during 2013. For this work he received the 2014

Marsh Award for Excellence in Public Sculpture The Marsh Award for Excellence in Public Sculpture is an annual award for public sculpture in the UK or Ireland. The Award is funded by the Marsh Charitable Trust and is made on the recommendation of a panel of judges under the auspices of the Pu ...

. In September 2013 Wilson, in collaboration with the artists Zatorski + Zatorski, created "1513: A Ships' Opera" a large-scale performance with historic ships on the River Thames, produced by The Cultureship. He is Visiting Research Professor at the University of East London's School of Architecture and the Visual Arts,. In November 2010, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the university."East London the place to be", say ground-breaking artists
University of East London, 25 November 2010.

Biography

References

External links