Ryan Gander

Ryan Gander OBE (born 1976) is an English artist, born in Chester, who lives and works between London and Suffolk. He is a conceptual artist who works with a wide range of materials.

Gander was born in Chester, northwest England, in 1976. He trained in Interactive Art at Manchester Metropolitan University, receiving a First Class Degree in 1999. After art school, he went to work in a carpet shop in Chester. In 2000 he spent a year at the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht, Netherlands, as a Fine Art Research Participant. Then he participated in the artists residency programme of the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam from 2001 - 2002.

His work is formally diverse and has included, "a chess set, a new word, a children's book, jewellery, customised sportswear, glass orb paperweights and maps," as well as photography, films, and drawings. Considering Gander’s work, "Appendix", art critic Mark Beasley said: "It’s an unwieldy yet fascinatingly open account, somewhat like lucid dreaming, which shows the artist at his most arch, open and revealing ... an attempt to discuss practice in a form sympathetic to the work in discussion."

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.

Gander was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2017 New Year Honours for services to contemporary art.

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".

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