About the Artwork

An air-dropped aid parcel suspended from a tree by it’s parachute. The parcel contains items relating to the subject of the ‘disparity between research based practices and production based practices; the polarity between the conceptual significance of the object as carrier; and the gulf between learning to speak with great articulation and eloquence and the incoherency of stuttering and stammering a chain of unrelated words at great volume’. The contents of the aid parcel are listed on an etched, metal plaque placed nearby.

Year: 2014


Copyright the artist, courtesy of Lisson Gallery Photo: © Nick Turpin

Material

Conical parachute, polythene barrels, nylon webbing, aluminium fixings, items from the artist's collection, stainless steel etched plaque

Dimensions

75-100 kg

Artist Biography

Ryan Gander

Ryan Gander is a cultural magpie in the widest sense, polymathically taking popular notions apart only to rebuild them in new ways. Language and storytelling play an overarching role in his work, not least in his series of Loose Association lectures or in his attempt to slip a nonsensical, palindromic new word, ‘mitim’, into the English language. Invitation and collaboration are also at the heart of Gander’s fugitive art – whether he’s exchanging fictionalised newspaper obituaries with an artist-friend or taking pictures of people looking at pictures at an art fair – although arguably every solipsistic action he takes merely holds up yet another mirror to his ceaselessly voracious mind. Ryan Gander, born in Chester in 1976, lives and works in London. His work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions at venues including Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, Belgium and Musée d'art Contemporain de Montréal (2016). Aspen Art Museum, Colorado, USA (2015); Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver, Canada (2015); Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, Australia (2015); Singapore Tyler Print Institute, Singapore (2015); Proyectos Monclova, Mexico City, Mexico (2015); OK Centre for Contemporary Art, Linz, Austria (2015) touring to Centre for Contemporary Art, Derry, Ireland (2014) and FRAC Île-de-France / Le Plateau, France (2013); Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France (2012); Museo Tamayo, Mexico City, Mexico (2012); Haus Konstruktiv, Zurich, Switzerland (2010); Solomon R Guggenheim Museum, New York, USA (2010); Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, UK (2008); the Stedelijk Museum Bureau, Amsterdam, The Netherlands (2007 & 2003); MUMOK, Vienna, Austria (2007) and the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco, USA (2007). He has also shown in group exhibitions such as the Shanghai Biennale, China (2012); documenta 13, Kassel, Germany (2012); ILLUMInations, 54th Venice Biennale, Italy (2011); 55th Carnegie International, Pittsburgh, USA (2008) and the Sydney Biennial, Australia (2008). Ryan Gander has been awarded numerous prestigious prizes, among others the Zürich Art Prize (2009), the ABN Amro Art Price (2006), the Baloise Art Statements of the Art Basel (2006), the Dutch Prix de Rome for sculpture (2003) and the OBE in 2017.