Ryan Gander's body of work is vast, varied and diverse. His work is not invested in any single medium or style, he has cultivated a "non-style" that enables him to pursue ideas across many traditionally understood artistic media. in which the visitor enters a totally designed office space in a former trading depot where they are invited to solve the mystery of a group show of fictionalised artists, including their work, to which they are denied access. is a
Comme des Garçons document wallet made collaboratively with the artist
Jonathan Monk. His series of works titled
Device #5 (2005) might be functional devices but actually are not. His installation at
dOCUMENTA (13) titled
I need some meaning I can memorise (The Invisible Pull) (2012), presented an empty room with a light breeze circulating. In 2015, Gander erected "The artist's second phone", a giant billboard installed outside
Lisson Gallery, London, which borrows the aesthetic of vacant Mexican billboards to announce his phone number to all passing. The series of works "A lamp made by the artist for his wife" (2013) are ad hoc combinations of products available from most hardware stores to produce a functioning item of furniture. Recently, Gander has increasingly used vending machines to distribute works. Also in 2015, Gander presented
Earnest Hawker (2015), his work in which a performer took on the persona of the artist, at the
Performa Biennial. At
frieze art fair 2019
Time Well Spent (2019) dispensed pebbles for £500 a piece.
Collision and association Gander's fascination with techniques of creative and associative collisions is evident in his earliest 'Loose Association' public lecturers, begun in 2002, and published together in 2007 as the book
Loose Associations and Other Lectures. These lectures range across material, from meditations on the film
Back to the Future to the writing of
Italo Calvino, modernism to children's books. Motifs of association and collision are evident across his works and he has explored techniques of association used by earlier modernist artists and architects, notably
Luis Barragán and
Ernö Goldfinger. With the sculptural series
The Way Things Collide (2012–ongoing), Gander collides two elements that are hardest to be associated logically with the human mind, each is a game, a challenge, with narrative consequences. A knotted condom is left on a USM cabinet; a skate wing rests on a suitcase; a macaroon balances on a stool. These are experiments in minimum constituents of narrative. These everyday acts of creativity, he argues, are often more exciting than the creative artworks of celebrated contemporary artists, whose repetition of a successful formula is contrary to creativity. Art for Gander is about "trying to make some original contribution to human history and knowledge, like an explorer". An influential book Gander has referred to in several interviews is
Edward Packer's
Choose Your Own Adventure books, first published in 1976, and marketed to 10 to 14 year olds. In these books the reader begins at page one, follows instructions at the foot of the page to turn to page two, from where instructions at the foot of that page motivates a decision that splits the narrative.
Disability-related works Gander is a wheelchair user with a long-term physical disability, a severe brittle bone condition which hospitalised him for long periods of time as a child. In 2006, his installation at the old Whitechapel Library, Is this Guilt in you too?, where he filled the space with obstacles, detritus, dead ends, and illusions meant to confound visitors and symbolize the inequitable difficulties faced by disabled people, was part of the
Arts Council England's Adjustments exhibitions whose aim was "to address transitional thinking on disability, equality and inclusion". His work for the 2011
Venice Biennale exhibition featured an action-figure sized sculpture that represents him while he falls from a wheelchair. Despite various interviews and works made in which Gander explicitly states he does not understand himself to be disabled or "differently abled" to anyone else, his work is interpreted, often by able-bodied commentators, as that of a disabled artist. The curator
Matthew Higgs, for example, has argued that his disability contributes to his unique way of seeing: "The first thing I ever noticed about Ryan was that he uses a wheelchair. I mention this not in passing, nor as a gratuitous aside. Whilst I accept that some people might argue that this information is irrelevant, I would like to think that the fact that Ryan uses a wheelchair does – at least – have some bearing on my subsequent understanding of his work." In recent years, Gander has felt compelled to address his disability in order to correct other people's perception of his exceptionalism as a wheelchair user. In the
BBC television programme
Me, My Selfie and I with Ryan Gander, broadcast in 2019, Gander met a
transhumanist who suggests that him he might be "improved" too by replacing his legs with bionic ones modelled on cheetahs. Gander replies: "Being in a wheelchair doesn't affect my view on the world. In an age where everyone identifies with being different, I am someone who actually can't walk and don't associate with being disabled. I don't tick the
Arts Council funding box that says 'disabled' because I don't identify ... I don't want cheetah legs. I don't know any cheetahs." This concrete resin sculpture presented the ruin of the fictional statue from the final chapter in
Oscar Wilde's children's book
The Happy Prince (1888). situated within a wooded area of the Karlslaue Park, Kassel, Delaware, as part of
dOCUMENTA 13. Based on
Sol LeWitt's open cube structure, and the story that LeWitt allowed his cats to use his redundant sculpture, upscaled and added to, it was offered as a climbing frame and scratching post for lions. Ten minimal, simplified forms based on ten objects originally designed to emit or shine light were cast in black concrete and arranged chronologically in a circular configuration. Each element featured three links of mooring chain attached, implying a nautical functionality as well as alluding to trinkets on an oversized charm bracelet. consisted of five public artworks, functional as benches, placed in a circle in the public square outside the cathedral. Each artwork was enlarged and reproduced from a maquette made by a child from Knotty Ash Primary using building blocks that, when rearranged, made a model of the cathedral. In 2019, Gander was commissioned to produce a public sculpture by
Cambridge Biomedical Campus. Titled
The Green & The Gardens, Gander led a concept that transformed the space into a green heart of the campus, a shared place for everyone. The piece will be based at
Scarborough Castle for 10 years through 2032, a period that scientists indicate as being "crucial in reducing carbon emissions before global warming hits a tipping point and becomes irreversible." Later that year, Ryan worked with the
National Glass Center to produce
Ghost Shop, a site specific life-sized replica of an abandoned betting shop sited in a vacant shop in Sunderland City Centre entirely made of glass with no visible fixtures and fittings. Laying within the space was banned furniture and detritus including carpet tiles, shop fittings, wall fixtures, upturned bins, fire extinguishers, discarded betting slips and a pile of unopened mail. In 2023, Ryan was chosen by
Manchester International Festival to produce a city-wide happening across the summer. Hundreds of thousands of coins consisting of three designs, were freely distributed in a public context to be found or discovered at free will by the entire population of a city or region. The coins had been designed to act both as lucky charms, to remind the finder of the value of time and attention as opposed to solely money, but also to act as a decision making tool that can be utilised to assist with choice and spontaneity. The three coins are based on three themes: Pause and Action, Together and Solo, as well as Speak and Listen. In addition, the coins carry mottos within their designs, such as ‘Time is your greatest asset’ and ‘Let the world take a turn’, both of which are often repeated by the artist's father, highlighting the dichotomy and value between doing and not doing, a true exercise in agency and change. In 2024, Ryan unveiled six life-sized bronze sculptures at Elephant Park (
Elephant and Castle, London) created in collaboration with
South London Gallery, year 4 school pupils, and the
Contemporary Art Society. The artist's first permanent piece of public art in London was created through a series of workshops with children from three local primary schools, with the works now available to view in the two-acre park in Elephant & Castle. During the workshops, led by Gander and the South London Gallery education team, the children explored possibilities for their futures together, and engaged in place-making activities relevant to their personal, local, and global contexts. The project’s aim was to create positive stories for young people and help them reflect on the diversity and vibrancy of their own communities and future. Other public artworks include:
Things just happened to him (2024) Zoo Atlanta, Grant Park, Atlanta, Georgia, USA;
Our Long Dotted Line (or 37 years previous) (2021) at Space K, Korea;
The day to day accumulation of hope, failure and ecstasy – The zenith of your career (The Last Degas) (2017), exhibited in the gardens of The Contemporary Austin Commission (USA), in late Autumn, 2018;
Because editorial is costly (2016), a giant, swollen, mirror-finish stainless steel version of "Rapport de volumes" (1919) by
Georges Vantongerloo in a crater as if crash landed exhibited during the Okayama Art Summit (JP); ''Dad's Halo Effect'' (2014), three polished stainless steel sculptures initially conceived by the artist's father when he worked at General Motors in the 1980s, and based on parts of the steering mechanism of a commercial
Bedford truck, re-imagined by the artist from his father's verbal description;
No political motivation (2011), a faithful reproduction of the revolving New Scotland Yard sign constructed to display the words 'THE WORLD S FAIR', incorrectly typeset with a half space between the characters 'D' and 'S' – meaning the sign could be interpreted in one of two differing ways, as an advertisement for an event or as a political slogan. ==Curatorial==