John Gerrard

John Gerrard is best known for his sculpture and installation works, typically taking the form of digital simulations, using real-time computer graphics.

Born in 1974, Ireland, he received a BFA from the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, Oxford University in 1997 and completed his postgraduate studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2000, Trinity College, Dublin in 2001 and at the Rijksakadamie, Independent Residency Program, Amsterdam in 2009. In 2002 he was awarded a Pépinières Residency at Ars Electronica, Linz, where he developed his first works in 3D real-time computer graphics.

He has consistently worked within this medium, originally developed for military use and now used extensively in the video game industry. Situated between the categories of fiction and documentary Gerrard inserts modelled worlds into annual solar cycles represented using slowly orbiting cameras. Concerned with the nature of contemporary power, the artist analyses structures of energy in particular, reflecting on the rapid expansion of human endeavours during the twentieth and early twenty first centuries.