Richard Wilson (sculptor)

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Richard Wilson (born May 24, 1953) is a sculptor, installation artist and musician.

Born in Islington, London in, he studied at the London College of Printing, Hornsey College of Art and Reading University. He was the DAAD residenct in Berlin in 1992, Maeda Visiting Artist at the Architectural Association in 1998 and nominated for the Turner Prize in both 1988 (when Tony Cragg won) and 1989 (when Richard Long won).

Richard Wilson's first solo show was 11 Pieces and was given at the Coracle Press Gallery in London, UK in 1976 and since then has had 50 exhibitions around the world.

He formed the Bow Gamelan Ensemble in 1983 with Anne Bean and Paul Burwell.

Wilson's work is characterised by architectural concerns with volume, illusionary spaces and auditory perception. His most famous work "20:50", a room of specific proportions, half filled with highly reflective used sump oil creating an illusion of the room turned upside down was first exhibited at Matts Gallery, London in 1987, became one of the signature pieces of the Saatchi Gallery. It is considered by many people to be the masterpiece of the genre of site-specific installation art, due to how successfully it envelopes the viewer into its rendition of the space. The same year the temporary (May-June) installation One Piece at a Time filled the south tower of the Tyne Bridge at Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

In the 1990s and 21st century, Wilson has continued to work on a large scale to fulfil his ambitions to "tweak or undo or change the interiors of space... in that way unsettle or break peoples preconceptions of space, what they think space might be", including an installation near London's Millennium Dome called "Slice of Reality" in 2000. It consisted of a portion (15%) of a ship being sliced off from the rest and mounted on the river bed. In 2007 Wilson installed "Turning the Place Over" in a building in Liverpool’s city centre. Described by Liverpool Biennial organisers as his "most radical intervention into architecture to date", Wilson cut an 8-metre diameter disc from the walls and windows of the building, and attached it to a motor which literally turns this section of the building inside out, in a cycle lasting just over two minutes.

He is presently (2007) a visiting tutor at the University of East London (School of Fine Art)