Liam Gillick (born 1964 Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire is an British artist. He was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2002. He works in various media, including texts and physical structures. Liam "appropriates the forms of corporate office architecture" and "investigates the semiotics of architecture in fictional yet non-narrative essays and books, installations, and objects" with references to earlier movements such as De Stijl in Holland and the geometrical forms of Piet Mondrian’s  paintings. Since the 1990's Gillick, 38, has exhibited his work around the world, and has also acted as a designer, critic, author and curator. His sculpture uses industrial materials and bold colour, reminiscent of the Minimalist movement.

But he is also keen for viewers to interact with his work, which has appeared in gallery bookshops, auditoriums and dining areas.

Using text and installations, he shows how social, historical and economic realities are shaped and manipulated.

His favourite themes include secondary historical figures - such as Erasmus Darwin, the elder brother of Charles who was the subject of Gillick's 1995 book, Erasmus Is Late.

In it, Erasmus is seen wandering around the London of 1997, late for his own 18th-Century dinner party - fractured time is another favourite theme. Gillick - who lives and works in London and New York - was awarded the first commission for a new outdoor sculpture court at Tate Britain.

He decided to create installation, Annlee You Proposes, which comprised a video work and coloured sculptures which also functioned as

furniture. His first major London solo show, The Wood Way,at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, features works made since the mid-1990s.

Two of his sculptures, The What If? Scenario and Discussion Island/Big Conference, are made from aluminium and coloured Plexiglass. They are installed in a way to allow visitors to explore the artwork. Liam Gillick is as much a maker of objects as he is a theoretician, writer, and teacher who has worked widely in the fields of design and architecture.

Local Discussion Screen is an example of Gillick’s sculptural work in which he appropriates the forms of corporate office architecture. With allusions to the sound proof barriers used to separate office cubicles, the title of this work suggests that the artist intends it to encourage communication, not limit it. The asymmetrical and elegantly balanced linear composition also recalls early modern art and architecture associated with such utopian movements as the de Stijl group in Holland. Recently Gillick’s critique of the ways in which capitalism and corporate culture shape the environment has focused on the legacies of such communal and socialist thinking. His sculptures and installations are visual expressions of this broad-based theoretical analysis of the ways in which ideology is manifested in architecture and how, in turn, architecture affects social interaction.'You can pass though here quite distractedly, or you can read into the work for meanings,' he elaborates. 'For instance, Plexiglass and aluminium are the materials of renovation and refurbishment. They are the materials of McDonald's signs, and display cases in Prada, of aeroplanes and bullet-proof screens in banks, of really sexy nightclub floors and riot shields.'

If there is a subversive subtext here, it harks back to the French situationist movement of the late Sixties, whose motive was to make us aware of the politics of the everyday. And, like the situationists, Gillick is aware of the mischievous and liberating power of the printed word. Great swathes of text run across the back walls of the gallery, the words running into each other without punctuation or space. One reads, 'My step was light and I could feel the ball of each foot pushing the sand down from me as I walked.' It is, Gillick says, 'the single line of poetry from B.F. Skinner's 1948 utopian novel, Walden 2. ' While working on an installation for a Korean hotel, Gillick printed it on a beach towel given to employees and guests.

Another text recounts the sentence passed on the Catholic martyr Thomas More, which in a flat, civic language describes how he is to be hung, drawn and quartered at Tyburn. The unfortunate More, Gillick tells me, has recently been appointed patron saint of politicians. The question of how one makes these lateral connections without accompanying notes is illustrative of the dilemma at the heart of conceptual art. Gillick, though, seems blissfully unperturbed by the notion that some (most?) people will probably not get the bigger picture.

In the programme, he refers to the redesigned cafe - part-Viennese, turn-of-the-century eating house, part Prada coffee shop - as a 'compromised functional utopia'. Thankfully, in person he is a lot funnier. 'I don't know what kind of space it is, really,' he admits. 'On one level it's a bit like a regular neo-liberal, relativist refurbishment job where you can half the size of the sandwiches and double the price.' On another level, though, it is a mischievous extension of the work in the gallery below.

Full of rarefied ideas floating free of their wood and aluminium moorings, somehow this strange and elusive exhibition works. The fact remains though, that the more one knows about the thinking behind this work, the more the thinking behind the work - rather than the work itself - becomes the most intriguing element. And, what Gillick seems to be thinking about most is how to subvert the very notion of the gallery space. To this end, he has arranged for a series of open-to-the-public Yoga classes to be held throughout the duration of the show. Or, one can simply sit amid these strange and resonant constructions and read his latest work, a small book of ideas, entitled Communes, Bars and Greenrooms, which, again, recalls the encoded pamphlets distributed by the situationists. You will need to read between the lines, though, for, among other things, Gillick is a consummate conceptual art prankster who constantly questions his own, as well as the public's ideas of what art is, and does. This, indeed, may be his saving grace.

The first work for the new sculpture court outside the Clore Gallery at Tate Britain has been commissioned from Liam Gillick. The work will be in two parts, consisting of sculptural elements that are also furniture and a computer animated video piece.

The first part stems from a project in the spring of 2000 when Gillick was guest professor at the CCA in Kitakyushi, Japan. There for a month he created a specifically designed installation in the communal area of the studios, comprising low tables, benches and bookshelves along with Japanese lanterns. Transferring these ideas from this semi-private space to the public space in the new gardens at Tate Britain, Gillick has conceived a social area which people can use to reflect and communicate. This involves the installation of several pieces of sculpture/furniture designed to articulate the space; brightly coloured benches, tables and shelving units, as well as lighting. The work can be situated between architecture, design and sculpture.

The second part of the commission is the presentation of a Japanese computer-animated character called Annlee. Annlee is designed as a commodity, intended for use in either Manga (Japanese adult comics) or in a commercial environment. Her copyright was bought by the French artists Philippe Parreno and Pierre Huyghe, who have used Annlee in works of art. Recently the two artists approached a few friends, including Gillick, offering Annlee to them as an extension of the collaborative sensibility that has developed between them over recent years. Gillick will generate a new image for the character as well as a narrative that touches upon ideas of location, identity and collaboration. The work will also refer to notions of public space and will therefore relate to the sculptural element of the installation.

Liam Gillick was born in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, in 1964.

In 2003 he received a joint commission from London Underground Platform for Art programme and Frieze Art Fair  to create a set of posters to be put in unused spaces at Great Portland Street tube station. These have strong single colours and text in simple typography, and were promoted by London Underground The work makes use of transcripts of non-specific television advertising – placing the structure of one communication medium into another. The structure of the message overwhelms the product and we are left to reflect on the potential of narrative and presentation.

A further project for London Underground, announced in January 2007, was the design of the cover for the Underground map, of which 15 million copies are distributed each year. His design, entitled The Day Before (You Know What They'll Call It? They'll Call it the Tube) shows the words of the date of the last day before the Underground opened, written in twelve sets of coloured letters symbolising the twelve rail lines.

Central to his practice has been the publication of a number of books that function in parallel to his built work. The artist has also produced a number of large works in an architectural context.

Young British Artists or YBAs  also Brit artists and Britart  a group of conceptual artists, painters, sculptors and installation artists derived from the Sensation Saatchi Gallery Exhibition.

Liam Gillick Detour painting on rolled canvas painted with artists acrylic paint. Hand painted copy.

30" x 40" canvas

R.R.P. £179.99

SALE Price £97

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Liam Gillick Detour painting on rolled canvas painted with artists acrylic paint. Hand painted copy.

30" x 40" canvas

R.R.P. £179.99

SALE Price £97

How to make your own canvas stretchers cheaply.

To make your own canvas stretchers the cheapest way possible without any special equipment or visit to  the framer. you will need the following :-

Four stretchers (the wood that makes up the frame).for 30" x 40" canvas we recommend 30-40 cm x 10-20cm wood. It depends how deep you want it, the wider the less of the painting will show on the front!

Staple gun and rust proof staples

A 45 angle mitre jig-- and a saw that fits the jig.

Tape measure

Pencil

Small hammer

Sandpaper

Small amount of strong wood glue.

that's it!!

Fist cut your wood to size required making sure to cut your first mitre on one side of the wood first- this will help to use as a guide to measure accurately the cut off size i.e. 30" in the mitre. Cut all for sides.

You should now have 2 pieces of 30" and 2 pieces of 40" of wood with all ends mitred.

Next you need to clue them together-- add a little glue and while holding the mitres together to form a corner with your other hand use the staple gun to stable the wood tightly --punch in two or three depending on the thickness of wood you have chosen. When all 4 sides have been stabled together , turn the frame over and stable those corners too. allow to dry.

You can now sand down any sharp and rough edges with sandpaper.

Now you need to place your canvas face down on the clean carpeted floor, or bed- nice comfortable height!

You the place your frame in the centre of you canvas. On the longest side I.e. 40” of the frame wrap the canvas over and staple it to the back of the frame in the centre. Then pull the canvas tightly on the opposite side of the frame and wrap it tightly over an stable it down with you other hand, repeat this for the other sides working around clock ways until you are left with the corners.

To finish off the corner just pull the canvas corner over and then the flaps from the asides to cover it and stable in place. if it sags a bit after time-- just lightly dampen with a little bottled still water on the back with a brush and leave facing flat down over night to dry- this will tighten the canvas without using wedges.

Done!!

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