Liam Gillick

Liam Gillick (1964) is a British artist and is mentioned many times in Nicholas Bourriaud's Relational Aesthetics. His work is also mentioned in Claire Bishop's essay Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics to which he has written a response. The discussion of issues surrounding 'relational art' - it's audience, as well as the intentions of the artist and so on - by artist's and critics/writers is particularly interesting here where there is a development of ideas as responses are written and challenges made.

His work is "underpinned by rigorous theorising: he is as much a writer as a maker of objects. However, Gillick's work is shaped by a very visual awareness of the way different properties of materials,

structures and colour can affect our surroundings and therefore influence the wa

y we behave."

He has published several books which exist alongside and explore ideas of his built work in another way. This makes it particularly interesting to see him as the subject of written critique such as Bishops.

"As art critic Ina Blom has stated:

Artists such as Liam Gillick ...no longer address abstraction as the principle for the creation of distinct minimalist objects, but rather try to create through design spaces for open social interaction [artworks] whose actual use is to be constantly redefined within the situation of the exhibition - without necessarily producing relational-aesthetic models of community.^[8]"

(Provisional) Consultation Partition 2000
Anodizied aluminium, formica, plywood
Courtesy Corvi - Mora, London