Marc Quinn
Born 1964 London – Lives and works in London
Marc Quinn’s famous self-portrait cast in blood, Self, has been re-written in the documentary film Making Waves by Gerry Fox, launched 2014. Quinn first learned to cast bronze assisting Barry Flanagan in 1983, and received an official degree from Cambridge University in 1986. He did not attend University with Damien Hirst or Tracey Emin at Goldsmiths, but is nonetheless considered one of the founding figures in the British contemporary art movement (YBA) as he exhibited his shocking works with Jay Jopling of White Cube. Quinn was also represented in the landmark exhibitions Young British Artists II at the Saatchi Gallery (1993) and Sensations at the Royal Academy (1997).
Quinn’s two best known sculptures expose the strengths and beauty of two famous women. Alison Lapper Pregnant (2005) is a fifteen-ton marble statue of disabled Lapper, swollen with child, and installed on the 4th Plinth. The marble material in reference to ancient Greek and Roman sculptures (which he uses for his amputee series) was an artistic tradition of the physical, idealized whole, but as ancient sculptures, their limbs were lost to ruin. His sculpture Siren (2008) is the solid gold portrait of Kate Moss with her legs behind her head. Inspired again by ancient culture, Moss’ likeness to the implacable death mask of Tutankhamen presents her as an iconic goddess. Exploring the human condition as a whole, Quinn also makes works about the microcosm of life. Taking as a point of reference the Garden of Eden, he produced DNA Garden (2001), a DNA collection of over 75 plant species and two humans. The Toxic Sublime (2015) is Quinn’s first exhibition at White Cube since 2010. London’s ‘natural’ elements are rubbed and scratched into the surfaces of his most recent works through which Quinn explores the external forces of the human condition.
Born 1964 London – Lives and works in London
Marc Quinn’s famous self-portrait cast in blood, Self, has been re-written in the documentary film Making Waves by Gerry Fox, launched 2014. Quinn first learned to cast bronze assisting Barry Flanagan in 1983, and received an official degree from Cambridge University in 1986. He did not attend University with Damien Hirst or Tracey Emin at Goldsmiths, but is nonetheless considered one of the founding figures in the British contemporary art movement (YBA) as he exhibited his shocking works with Jay Jopling of White Cube. Quinn was also represented in the landmark exhibitions Young British Artists II at the Saatchi Gallery (1993) and Sensations at the Royal Academy (1997).
Quinn’s two best known sculptures expose the strengths and beauty of two famous women. Alison Lapper Pregnant (2005) is a fifteen-ton marble statue of disabled Lapper, swollen with child, and installed on the 4th Plinth. The marble material in reference to ancient Greek and Roman sculptures (which he uses for his amputee series) was an artistic tradition of the physical, idealized whole, but as ancient sculptures, their limbs were lost to ruin. His sculpture Siren (2008) is the solid gold portrait of Kate Moss with her legs behind her head. Inspired again by ancient culture, Moss’ likeness to the implacable death mask of Tutankhamen presents her as an iconic goddess. Exploring the human condition as a whole, Quinn also makes works about the microcosm of life. Taking as a point of reference the Garden of Eden, he produced DNA Garden (2001), a DNA collection of over 75 plant species and two humans. The Toxic Sublime (2015) is Quinn’s first exhibition at White Cube since 2010. London’s ‘natural’ elements are rubbed and scratched into the surfaces of his most recent works through which Quinn explores the external forces of the human condition.