Gary Hume
°1962, Kent (UK) – lives and works in London (UK) and New York (US)
Gary Hume Part was part of the notorious and internationally celebrated group of Young British Artists that studied at London’s Goldsmiths College in the late 1980s, and came to prominence in the early 1990s.
Hume first received critical acclaim in the early 1990s with his bold, large-scale paintings which used high gloss paint to create planes of industrial colour. These were initially seen in the near-legendary 1988 Freeze exhibition organised by Hume’s fellow student Damien Hirst. An early focus on institutional doors evolved over subsequent decades to encompass a range of subjects: figures such as mothers and babies, friends and celebrities from Tony Blackburn to Kate Moss as well as images drawn from nature or childhood including flowers, birds and snowmen. Through this surprisingly varied set of motifs, Hume explores the full spectrum of emotional response from wonder and joy to melancholy and loss. Conventional ideas of beauty are frequently countered by a darker, more questioning sense of the world and recognisable forms are sometimes fragmented to near abstraction.
courtesy of Tate, London
Gary Hume represented Britain at the Venice Biennale in 1999 and the São Paulo Biennial in 1996, the same year he was nominated for the Turner Prize. In 2001, he was elected to the Royal Academy of Arts, London.
Gary Hume’s work is shown internationally. Solo exhibitions include Aspen Art Museum, Colorado; Tate Britain, London; Modern Art Oxford; Kestnergesellschaft, Hannover; Kunsthaus Bregenz; Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; ICA, London; Fundação La Caixa, Barcelona; and Group shows include National Portrait Gallery, London; Fearnley Museet, Oslo; Pinchuk Art Centre, Kiev; MoMA, New York; Tate Britain, London; Louisiana Museum, Denmark; and Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.
Gary Hume is represented by the following galleries;
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