Born Sydney, Australia 1972
Lives and works in Melbourne
Shaun Gladwell’s practice engages personal experience and a wider speculation of art history to examine the dynamics of contemporary culture. Gladwell transposes forms of urban expression such as skateboarding, graffiti, BMX bicycle riding, break-dancing and extreme sports into the multiple mediums of his practice. These performances, videos, paintings, photographs, sculptures and mixed reality works make discursive investigations into forms of creativity and notions of freedom. In his video works, Gladwell draws links between historical and contemporary models of the body in space, proposing a lineage between the flâneur and contemporary cultural figures such as skateboarders, free runners and other physical and street performers.
Gladwell’s continued investigation of spatial articulation is reflected in the installation structures of the work itself, through the use of architectural features, projection surfaces. and multi-channel formats. Public collections include the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide; Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Orange County Museum of Art, California; and Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford. Gladwell’s works can also be found in corporate and private collections in Australia, Asia, the United Kingdom, Europe and the United States.
What does Hatched mean to you?’
Hatched was extremely important as my first interstate exhibition. It lead to an awareness of my contemporaries throughout Australia. Not only that, but it instilled in me a newfound confidence to continue exhibiting my work.
