Art Metropole

Wim Delvoye was born in 1965 in Wervik, Belgium. Working in such varied mediums as sculpture, drawing, live tattooed animals, stained-glass windows, and X-ray photographs, Delvoye mischievously brings together the extremes of high-brow and low-brow culture. In the late 80s, Delvoye applied Dutch ornamental traditions (i.e. Delft china patterns and coats of arms) to mundane objects like shovels, gas cylinders, and ironing boards. In works like Cement Truck (1990–91) and Delft Concrete Mixer (1992), lavish flourishes adorned larger objects. In his series Mosaics (1990–92), realistic renderings of excrement were used to decorate white ceramic tiles. In 1992, Delvoye began an extensive project in which he exhibited live pigs and dried skins of pigs, both covered in tattoos drawn from the domain of bikers and punk rockers: skulls, daggers, snakes, hearts, and Harley Davidson logos. In 2004, he extended this medium by exhibiting stuffed pigs and by expanding his tattoo vernacular to include Louis Vuitton patterns and images of Disney princesses.

Concurrent to his projects involving tattooed pigs and the eventual establishment of their permanent home at “Art Farm” in Beijing, Delvoye developed several other major projects. From 1998–99, the artist photographed patterns of various sliced meats meticulously assembled to approximate cold, clean marble floors. In his ongoing series of Gothic works, initiated in 1999, Delvoye created stained-glass windows and sculptural works. For the latter, he constructed, in the elaborate International Gothic style, massive equipment typically found on construction sites (a Caterpillar machine, dump truck, flatbed trailer, and cement truck). In 2009, Delvoye built Torre, a Cor-ten-steel tower, with ogival-arched windows, tracery, and turrets, on the terrace of Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, overlooking the Grand Canal, for the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice. The artist’s ongoing project, Cloaca, involves several versions of an original machine completed in 2000, which replicated the digestive system, consuming matter at one end and producing excrement at the other.

Solo exhibitions of Delvoye’s work have been organized by Castello di Rivoli (1991), Kunsthalle Nürnberg (1992), Open Air Museum Middelheim in Antwerp (1997), Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris (2000), Migros Museum in Zurich (2001), Museum Kunst-Palast in Dusseldorf (2002), The Power Plant in Toronto (2004), and Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice (2009). His work has also been included in major group exhibitions such as Venice Biennale (1990, 1999, and 2009), Documenta IX (1992), Sydney Biennale (1992), Lyon Biennial (2000 and 2005), and Shanghai Biennale (2006). Delvoye lives and works in Ghent.

Bill Burns was born in Regina, Saskatchewan in 1957 and has lived and worked as an artist in Toronto, Canada and London, England. His work consists mainly of conceptual writings, artists’ books and multiples. He studied under Gerard Hemsworth, Jon Thompson and John Latham at Goldsmiths College in London, England. He is known for his Safety Gear for Small Animals (SGSA) which was first shown at 303 Gallery in New York in 1994 and later at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2005/2006 and at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London in 2008. His 2002 project Everything I Could Buy on eBay About Malaria which was shown at the Wellcome Trust in London, England is considered a seminal work in the area of electronic collecting. His work about life in the art world known as Veblen Goods was shown at MASS MoCA in 2012.

Burns has published numerous books including When Pain Strikes (Burns, Busby, Sawchuk), a critical anthology about pain and pain relief, published by the University of Minnesota Press in 1999. Other book titles include Analgesia (Rochefort,Montreal, 1993), How to Help Animals Escape from Degraded Habitats (Optica, Montreal, 1996), Urban Fauna Information Station (Mercer Union, Toronto, 2002), Safety Gear for Small Animals (MOCCA, Toronto and California State University, Fullerton, 2005) Bird Radio (Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther Koenig, Cologne, 2007) and The Flora and Fauna Information Service – 0.800.0.0FAUNA0FLORA (ICA, London, 2008). Burns has also published dozens of guides, posters, and editions. His editions are included in major museum collections throughout the world.

Burns’ work has been exhibited in major museums and biennial exhibitions since the nineteen nineties. His most notable exhibitions include the ICA in London, the MoMA in New York as well as Forum Arte y Vida at the Havana Bienal in Havana, Cuba in 2003, the Bienal del Fin del Mundo in Ushuaia, Argentina in 2007 and the Quebec City Biennial – Manif d’art 5, in 2010.

Derek Sullivan was born in 1976 in Richmond Hill, Ontario. He received a BFA from York University and an MFA from the University of Guelph. His multiple National Gallery Catalogue 2004 was included in the exhibition Art Metropole The Top 100 at the National Gallery of Canada (2007). Recently his work was featured in the group exhibitions We Can Do This Now at The Power Plant in Toronto (2007) and Gasoline Rainbows at the Contemporary Art Gallery in Vancouver (2007). He is represented by Jessica Bradley Art + Projects, Toronto.

Ross Sinclair is an artist and musician and writer who also teaches. In 1994 Sinclair had the tattoo, Real Life, inked on his back and since then his work has taken the form of a simultaneous celebration and commiseration of the paradigm of The Real – from the inside out, and always in relation to a particular context and audience. He has described the Real Life character he has utilised in many works since then like a character a writer would use in a series of books, appearing in different settings while remaining essentially the same through all the challenges and context of the different projects he has made. Sinclair employs many formal devices including performance and painting, installation and music, often all at the same time.

Since the late ‘80’s he has shown in hundreds of group and solo exhibitions in the UK, Europe and beyond, producing various monographs on his artworks, notably If North Was South and East Was West, (Badischer Kunstverein, 2004) as well as writing texts and essays in various books and publications. He continues to make music, often in relation to his artworks and periodically releases these songs in some form or other, most recently in the L.P. Everything Flows, Experimental art into music (Patricia Fleming Projects 2012). His work is held in many collections, The Scottish Arts Council, The British Council, Arts Council of England, Ferens Art Gallery, Hull, England, The Pier Arts Centre, Orkney, Stirling District Council, Sammlung Hauser & Wirth, St Gallen, Hamburg Kunsthalle, Collection Lambert, Avignon, France, and Private Collections, Switzerland, Germany, UK, France, USA, Hong Kong.

Sinclair’s Real Life projects, have often sought to re-imagine the relationships in our society through an ongoing investigation of the many institutions and constructs social / political / economic / cultural / geographic/ historic to which we all are inextricably linked as individuals, and collectively. Over the last 20 years, an important thread of Sinclair’s work has sought to address the very particular nature of the individual, collective and national identities of the small damp Northern-European nation sometimes known as Scotland. The Real Life Gordons of Huntly, 1318 – 2011 is the latest manifestation of this series. That work and many others from the series are discussed in the book We ♥ Real Life Scotland published by Deveron Arts in 2012.

Sinclair has won various international prizes, most notably a Creative Scotland Award, 2007, the Baloise, Statements prize at the Basel Art fair in 2001, Arendt Oetker Atelier Stipendium, Galerie fur Zeitgenossische Kunst, Leipzig, 1999 and was the recipient of a Hamlyn Award 1998-2000. He is currently a Research Fellow at Glasgow School of Art.