Ryan Gander
Gander was born in Chester, who lives and works between London and Suffolk. He is a conceptual artist who works with a wide range of materials.
He started his talk by admitting that he didn’t prepare for the lecture, saying that if he did bring something for the lecture that the result would have been boring for us all. This lead to the topic of repetition which is a fear of his and then to the love of defying expectations.
Art is something that gander fell into by accident and he pursued this for every day but only did different things. On top of this he has made 38 books most of which are writings, he has only made one picture book. When he first received the finished book, he couldn’t remember how half the work was done in the book. He mentioned it felt like a group catalogue of work rather than his own. That being said he did say that it was a accomplishment.
As revealed in a recent Culture Show documentary on BBC television about his practice, most of Gander’s art is completely removed from the hand of the artist and carried out by a team of technical specialists. He is often physically incapable of carrying out the making of the work himself.
Disability related works
Gander is a wheelchair user with a long-term physical disability. His work for the 2011 Venice Biennale exhibition featured an action-figure sized sculpture that represents him while he falls from a wheelchair. “It is a self-portrait in the worst possible position”.
Additionally, Gander’s experiences as a disabled artist often make their way into his pieces. In 2006, his installation at the old Whitechapel Library, ‘Is this Guilt in you too?’, where he filled the space with obstacles, detritus, dead ends, and illusions meant to confound visitors and symbolize the inequitable difficulties faced by the disabled, was part of the Art Council’s ‘Adjustments’ exhibitions whose aim was ‘to address transitional thinking on disability, equality and inclusion’.
His other works are normally not related to disabilities. However, Matthew Higgs argues in his commentary about Gander’s work, that his disability contributes to Gander’s unique way of seeing: “The first thing I ever noticed about Ryan was that he uses a wheelchair. I mention this not in passing, nor as a gratuitous aside. Whilst I accept that some people might argue that this information is irrelevant, I would like to think that the fact that Ryan uses a wheelchair does – at least – have some bearing on my subsequent understanding of his work.”
