Richard Wilson
5-Piece Kit

11 October - 4 November 2006
Wednesday-Friday, 12-6; Saturday 12-4

Reception for the artists: Tuesday 10 October, 6-8.30 pm

Matthew Bown Gallery will be showing Richard Wilson’s new 3D work 5-Piece-Kit from 11 October to 4 November 2006. 5-piece kit is based on the destruction of a drum-kit and its reassembly. It reflects several of Wilson’s long-standing concerns: the radical transformation of obdurate man-made objects; the capacity of familiar items to bear novel “narratives”; music and drumming. 5-piece-kit is available in an edition of 5, although each work, utilising a different drum-kit, is unique.

Richard Wilson is one of the UK’s leading artists working in sculpture, installation and multi-media. He was born in London in 1953. Since the early 1970s he has been creating large-scale works that alter our understanding and perception of space, challenging expectations of the formal limits of sculpture.

The show at Matthew Bown Gallery runs concurrently with a major installation of the artist’s new work, objects and movies, at a major public space,The Curve at the Barbican. In The Curve, Wilson has “escaped” from the icon of British transport, the London taxi, by tunnelling through it; crushed a mobile burger van; and is spinning a caravan on its axis (Richard Wilson, The Curve, Barbican Art Gallery, London; 27 September 2006 - 14 January 2007).

Wilson is a guest speaker at the Frieze Art Fair 2006 VIP Programme.

Wilson rose to prominence in the mid 1980s with the installation 20:50 – a key work in British installation art – where he filled Matt’s Gallery in east London to waist height with sump oil. The space could be entered via narrow walkway while the reflective surface of the oil deceptively doubled the space of the room. This manner of ingenious intervention became emblematic of Wilson’s practice and he has continued to create installations specifically responding to the space in which they are shown. For his solo exhibition at LA MOCA in 1996, Wilson took a cue from the ubiquitous LA swimming pool for the work Deep End, while in 2000 for the Millennium Dome New Sculpture Project in London, Wilson sliced a vertical section from a 600 ton sand dredger.

Wilson is also member and founder of the Bow Gamelan Ensemble – a collaborative musical endeavor with Anne Bean and Paul Burwell based in the London borough of Bow. Their performances create experimental soundscapes using unconventional instruments such as broken glass, sirens and fireworks.

Richard Wilson attended Hornsey College of Art until 1974 and then studied at Reading University from 1974 to 1976. He has represented Britain in the Venice (1986), Sao Paolo (1989) and Sydney (1992) Biennales, participated in the in Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial 2000, was short listed for the Turner Prize in 1988/89. He was selected for the prestigious DAAD residency in Berlin in 1992. Wilson’s work is represented in the Weltkunst Collection at IMMA, Dublin; the Government Art Collection; the British Museum; the Arts Council; the British Council; Ulster Museum, Belfast; Leeds Museums and Art Gallery; the Centre of Contemporary Art, Warsaw; and the Museet for Samstidskunst, Oslo, British Land Corporation, Deutsche Morgan Grenfell and Colección Bergé, Madrid. Wilson has also been the subject of numerous monographs and articles from the late 1970s to the present, including a recent publication by the Tate Gallery, written by Simon Morrissey.

5-Piece Kit (prototype), 2006, mixed media


5-Piece Kit (prototype), 2006, mixed media



Caravan, 2006
(Flash movie, 30")


Trailer Trash
Caravan, dvd movie, other media
2006


Hot-Dog Roll
Mixed media
2006


Meter's running
London taxi, dvd movie, other media
2006