Ryan Gander with Jamie Clark, Phoebe Edwards, Tianna Mehta, Maisie Williams and Joshua Yates

Ryan Gander with Jamie Clark, Phoebe Edwards, Tianna Mehta, Maisie Williams and Joshua Yates, From five minds of great vision (The Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King disassembled and reassembled to conjure resting places in the public realm), 2018. Installation view at Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral, Liverpool Biennial 2018. Photo: Rob Battersby 

Ryan Gander, Key performance indicator i, ii & iii (Habitual Abstraction). Image courtesy the artist. Photo: Jack Hems

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Ryan Gander (b. 1976, Chester, UK) is an artist living and working in London and Suffolk, UK. Through associative thought processes that connect the everyday and the esoteric, his artworks materialise in many different forms: from sculpture to film, writing, graphic design, installation, performance and more. Gander’s work involves a questioning of language and knowledge, a reinvention of the modes of appearance and creation of an artwork. 

Time Moves Quickly is a major new project by Ryan Gander. Gander has worked collaboratively with five children from Knotty Ash Primary School in Liverpool – Jamie Clark, Phoebe Edwards, Tianna Mehta, Maisie Williams and Joshua Yates – to produce a series of artworks and a film exploring the activities carried out in the workshops. The project takes inspiration from the Montessori method of education, based on self-directed activity, hands-on learning and collaborative play.

In addition to a presentation at Bluecoat, Gander and the children have created a new public artwork for the city: five bench-like sculptures which can be found on the plateau behind the Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral. For this new commission, Gander dissected a model of architect Frederick Gibberd’s modernist cathedral into a series of simple ‘building blocks’. The blocks were then reassembled into different configurations by the children. The maquettes that Gander and the children created have been reproduced on a larger scale to produce this new public seating arrangement within the cathedral grounds.

Gander has exhibited internationally for over a decade, including at the National Museum of Art, Osaka, Japan (2017); Musee d'art contemporain de Montréal, Canada (2016); Manchester Art Gallery, UK (2014); Tate Britain, London, UK (2013); Tate Liverpool, UK (2013); dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel, Germany (2012); and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, USA (2010).

Ryan Gander with Jamie Clark, Phoebe Edwards, Tianna Mehta, Maisie Williams and Joshua Yates at Liverpool Biennial 2018

From five minds of great vision (The Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King disassembled and reassembled to conjure resting places in the public realm), 2018
Glass reinforced concrete
Exhibited at the Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral plateau

Reading without stigma, 2018
Single channel video, 17:58 min
Exhibited at Bluecoat

Rietveld Reconstruction series, 2018
Timber
Exhibited at Bluecoat

Key performance indicator series, 2018
Acrylic on canvas, tray frame
Exhibited at Bluecoat

Creative play involves some risk taking – Abstraction Distraction series, 2018
Stained pine on stained birch plywood
Exhibited at Bluecoat

Prototype for Sensitised logic series, 2018
Wood, steel, paint
Exhibited at Bluecoat

All commissioned by Liverpool Biennial