Shaun Gladwell

Born 1972 Syd­ney, Aus­tralia
Lives and works in Syd­ney, Australia

Shaun Glad­well uses dis­ci­plines of human move­ment to inves­ti­gate func­tion and mean­ing with­in urban, nat­ur­al, and extend­ed real­i­ty envi­ron­ments. His oeu­vre is con­sid­ered an impor­tant con­tri­bu­tion to the cat­a­logu­ing and cel­e­bra­tion of move­ment-based sub-cul­tures that have emerged with­in his gen­er­a­tion. The artist has also been rec­og­nized for pio­neer­ing work with immer­sive, extend­ed real­i­ty tech­nolo­gies. Glad­well con­tex­tu­al­izes ​‘the new’ by iden­ti­fy­ing par­al­lels and pat­terns through­out the his­to­ry of art, cul­tur­al pro­duc­tion, and philosophy.

Gladwell’s ear­ly video projects are root­ed in the artist’s own prac­tice of urban sports, and employ slow motion, inver­sion, and min­i­mal edit­ing to focus on the oth­er­wise imper­cep­ti­ble details of phys­i­cal actions. Storm Sequence (2000), shown at the 52^nd Venice Bien­nale, presents skate­board­ing as a chore­o­graph­ic dance, which the artist per­forms against the ris­ing waves of an oncom­ing coastal storm (an evo­ca­tion of the con­tem­po­rary sub­lime). The video Dou­ble Linework (2000) tracks the artist skate­board­ing along road traf­fic mark­ings, result­ing in an exper­i­men­tal trac­ing or draw­ing of the city.

The artist’s per­for­mance prac­tice ques­tions the func­tion of civic spaces and archi­tec­ture through cre­ative and ludic ​‘mis­use.’ By exten­sion, per­for­mance based video art­works devel­op an aes­thet­ic lan­guage that pic­to­ri­al­ly inverts spaces whilst sym­bol­i­cal­ly upend­ing their pow­er. The work Tan­gara (2003) depicts the artist using ​‘safe­ty’ handrails on a com­muter train to ​‘dan­ger­ous­ly’ sus­pend his invert­ed body — a per­for­mance that is itself pre­sent­ed to the view­er upside-down and in slow motion — the train inte­ri­or now appear­ing like a space­craft in zero grav­i­ty. The ongo­ing pho­to­graph­ic series descrip­tive­ly enti­tled Sculp­ture Inverts presents upside-down images of Glad­well and col­leagues who are them­selves sus­pend­ed in invert­ed posi­tions under­neath mon­u­ments of var­i­ous cul­tur­al iden­ti­ties. The result­ing pho­tographs see the artist and his col­lab­o­ra­tors posi­tioned above the sculpt­ed fig­ures who in turn assume the posi­tion of cary­atids, thus sub­vert­ing the intend­ed pow­er and hier­ar­chy of the monuments.

Between 2007 and 2010, Glad­well extend­ed his range of con­cep­tu­al, sym­bol­ic, and geo­graph­ic coor­di­nates to engage the desert loca­tions of inland Aus­tralia and South­ern Afghanistan. It was dur­ing this peri­od the artist rep­re­sent­ed Aus­tralia at the 53^rd Venice Bien­nale with the Mad­dest­max­imus project — a series of pho­tographs, sculp­tures and videos that con­nect high­ly dis­cur­sive ref­er­ences — from pop­u­lar film (name­ly George Miller’s Mad Max series) through to the ancient Greek mythol­o­gy of Charon and the riv­er Styx. The series also engaged mate­r­i­al as diverse as Leonar­do da Vinci’s illus­tra­tion of Vit­ru­vian Man and the work of Aus­tralian indige­nous artist Emi­ly Kame Kng­war­r­eye. The Mad­dest­max­imus series became a key exam­ple of the artist’s con­cept and method­ol­o­gy of ​‘per­for­ma­tive landscapes’.

Fol­low­ing the 53^rd Venice Bien­nale in late 2009, Glad­well was com­mis­sioned as Australia’s Offi­cial War Artist to work in Afghanistan along­side the ISAF (Inter­na­tion­al Secu­ri­ty Assis­tance Force) — a multi­na­tion­al mil­i­tary mis­sion found­ed in 2001. The result was a series of pho­tos and videos that were both crit­i­cal of the con­flict and of Gladwell’s own ​‘embed­ded’ posi­tion with­in it. The video work POV Mir­ror Sequence (2009) fea­tures two oppos­ing screens, each with a com­bat sol­dier record­ing each other’s iden­ti­cal­ly syn­chro­nized move­ments. With­in the video instal­la­tion the actions resem­ble an abstract, mir­rored chore­og­ra­phy of sur­veil­lance and cal­i­bra­tion on the out­skirts of a desert mil­i­tary base. In the pho­to­graph­ic series Sleep­ing Sol­diers (2009) ambiva­lent images of sol­diers oscil­late between being (n)either asleep (n)or dead. Glad­well stat­ed that it was rest and sleep that would momen­tar­i­ly take sol­diers away from the ordeal of war and yet it would also be sleep that would return them to the hor­rors and trau­ma of war for years to come.

In 2013 Glad­well pre­sent­ed a cri­tique of art insti­tu­tions and specif­i­cal­ly mod­ernist sculp­ture with his cel­e­brat­ed video trip­tych Skate­board­ers vs Min­i­mal­ism (2013). The videos cap­tured pro­fes­sion­al skate­board­ers rid­ing (and destroy­ing) exact repli­cas of Amer­i­can min­i­mal­ist works by Don­ald Judd, Carl Andre and Tony Smith in a mod­ern muse­um envi­ron­ment. The videos, which are accom­pa­nied by a sound­track by Amer­i­can min­i­mal­ist com­pos­er Philip Glass, use the for­mal qual­i­ties of min­i­mal­ist sculp­ture as a func­tion­al site for street skateboarding.

Glad­well employed a sim­i­lar line of enquiry for Scape 7 in Christchurch, New Zealand, in Inflect­ed Forms (2013), a series of pub­lic sculp­tures that offered local skate­board­ers ramps and objects, typ­i­cal­ly found in skateparks, with­in civic space. Glad­well added frac­tures and fis­sures to the gener­ic forms as if they had been trans­formed by the city’s recent earth­quakes. Gladwell’s cre­ative equa­tion ful­ly incor­po­rat­ed destruc­tive, Dionysian process­es in response to the site’s recent nat­ur­al dev­as­ta­tion, whilst simul­ta­ne­ous­ly rec­og­niz­ing local skate­board­ers’ abil­i­ty to engage and adapt to the trans­formed urban landscape.

In 2013 Glad­well was com­mis­sioned by the Gergiev Fes­ti­val to pro­duce a video work for a con­cert ver­sion of Richard Wagner’s The Fly­ing Dutch­man, first con­duct­ed by Wag­n­er in 1843. With Gladwell’s video, the opera was per­formed by the Rot­ter­dam Phil­har­mon­ic Orches­tra, con­duct­ed by Yan­nick Nézet-Séguin, on Sun­day 15 Sep­tem­ber 2013 at De Doe­len, Rot­ter­dam. In Gladwell’s inter­pre­ta­tion of Wagner’s orig­i­nal, the opera is pre­sent­ed as an Aus­tralian surf film that replaces the sea­far­ing ref­er­ences in the libret­to with per­for­mances cen­tred around surf­ing; the artist cast per­form­ers skilled in both surf­ing and pro­fes­sion­al dance. Regard­ing this work, Glad­well has stat­ed that he was inspired by the sem­i­nal Aus­tralian surf film Morn­ing of the Earth (1971).

The artist’s analy­sis and enquiry of util­i­ty through per­for­mance would expand again in exper­i­ments with extend­ed real­i­ty tech­nol­o­gy. The 360 video Reversed Ready­made (2017−19) observes pro­fes­sion­al freestyle BMX rid­er Simon O’Brien rid­ing an exact repli­ca of Mar­cel Duchamp’s Bicy­cle Wheel (1913). Here, the well-known dys­func­tion­al and absur­dist ready­made sculp­ture is ren­dered ​‘ride­able’ through O’Brien’s skill, thus revers­ing Dada’s use­less­ness into the usable. In 360 video, Glad­well presents O’Brien’s per­for­mance where­by the rid­er com­plete­ly encir­cles the viewer.

The vir­tu­al real­i­ty ani­ma­tion Orbital Van­i­tas (that pre­miered at the Sun­dance Film Fes­ti­val in 2017) is a 10-minute immer­sive video in which an at-first non­de­script object (aster­oid, mete­orite or moon?) approach­es the view­er from their posi­tion in orbit around the earth. As the mys­te­ri­ous object draws near­er, an enor­mous human skull is revealed. The course of the ani­ma­tion even­tu­al­ly allows the view­er to enter the skull’s vast inte­ri­or, where it instead resem­bles an expan­sive cave or inner plan­et. Gladwell’s inven­tive use of extend­ed real­i­ty tech­nol­o­gy is large­ly locat­ed in an employ­ment of ​‘scale cri­sis’, of which Orbital Van­i­tas is a key example.

The artist’s most recent work in extend­ed real­i­ty Pass­ing Elec­tri­cal Storms (com­mis­sioned by the Nation­al Gallery of Vic­to­ria, 2023) also offers an immense, tem­po­ral, and phys­i­cal scale cri­sis. The 10-minute expe­ri­ence sim­u­lates the process of dying — from car­diac arrest to brain death. Par­tic­i­pants are required to wear a heart rate mon­i­tor and a VR head­set while lying down on a cus­tom fab­ri­cat­ed bed with built-in hap­tic sys­tems. Through the use of a real-time cam­era feed, par­tic­i­pants see them­selves as they expe­ri­ence car­diac arrest, before float­ing above an image of their body (after the unsuc­cess­ful attempts of sur­geons to revive them) and ris­ing into vast uni­ver­sal space. Direct ref­er­ences to the physics doc­u­men­tary Pow­ers of 10 (1977) pro­vide a sense of dis­tance and vol­ume in an arrest­ing con­tem­pla­tion of the uni­verse both with­in and beyond the body. The expe­ri­ence is both unset­tling and media­tive as each par­tic­i­pant is par­ti­tioned from the gen­er­al sen­so­ry con­nec­tion to their real world state, into the alter­nate real­i­ty of death. It is in this man­ner that Glad­well has posit­ed Pass­ing Elec­tri­cal Storms and its pre­de­ces­sor Orbital Van­i­tas as con­tri­bu­tions to the nascent field of research he has coined ​‘cyber-necro­nau­tics’— the use of immer­sive tech­nol­o­gy to fur­ther under­stand the process and expe­ri­ence of dying via simulation.

The artist’s ongo­ing inter­est in death-reck­on­ing via memen­to mori and van­i­tas is explored in both tra­di­tion­al and emerg­ing media. For exam­ple, the ongo­ing series of paint­ings of human skulls ren­dered in the pop­u­lar Aus­tralian food­stuff Veg­emite. The paint­ings are most­ly var­nished and pre­served, with some exam­ples left to dete­ri­o­rate and ​‘grow’ — a process the artist has likened to Oscar Wilde’s aging and fes­ter­ing por­trait described in The Pic­ture of Dori­an Gray (1890).

The engage­ment with con­straint and obsta­cle with­in the con­text of mor­tal­i­ty was ren­dered by the artist in his video work Homo Sub­ur­bi­en­sis (2020), pro­duced dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and sub­se­quent lock­downs. Man­dat­ed Gov­ern­ment restric­tions led the artist to tran­scribe a range of out­door activ­i­ties into domes­tic inte­ri­ors (such as bicy­cle rid­ing and archery). Sequences of these domes­tic per­for­mances were jux­ta­posed with long dis­tance run­ning per­for­mances in the man­ner of Bhut­to — where scenes were record­ed just as the body was fal­ter­ing due to exhaustion.

In every medi­um avail­able to him, Glad­well inves­ti­gates the full range of human expe­ri­ence, from the cre­ative pow­er of play to the com­plex­i­ties of geopo­lit­i­cal con­flict. Through­out his career to date, the artist asks, what is it to func­tion with­in a col­lec­tive social and polit­i­cal cor­pus? Ques­tions are also posit­ed to our own indi­vid­ual bod­ies through a prac­tice that sur­veys the very edges of expe­ri­ence and existence. 

Shaun Glad­well is an Aus­tralian con­tem­po­rary artist who works in the fields of paint­ing, draw­ing, pho­tog­ra­phy, mov­ing image, per­for­mance, and extend­ed real­i­ty. Born in Syd­ney in 1972, Glad­well received a 1^st class hon­ours degree from Syd­ney Col­lege of the Arts and an MA from the U.N.S.W. Col­lege of Fine Arts before under­tak­ing post­grad­u­ate asso­ciate research at Gold­smiths Col­lege, Uni­ver­si­ty of Lon­don in 2000 – 2001 on a Sam­stag Scholarship. 

Glad­well has been the sub­ject of numer­ous solo insti­tu­tion­al exhi­bi­tions includ­ing Shaun Glad­well: Pacif­ic Under­tow, Muse­um of Con­tem­po­rary Art Aus­tralia, Syd­ney (2019); 1000 Hors­es, Tel Aviv Muse­um of Art, Israel (2017); Shaun Glad­well. Skaters ver­sus Min­i­mal­is­mo, Cen­tro Atlanti­co de Arte Mod­er­no CAAM, Las Pal­mas, Gran Canaria (2017); Cycles of Rad­i­cal Will, De La Warr Pavil­ion, East Sus­sex, Unit­ed King­dom (2013); Per­pet­u­al 360° Ses­sions, SCHUNCK* Heerlen, The Nether­lands (2011); and MAD­DEST­MAX­IMVS: Plan­et & Stars Sequence, Aus­tralian Pavil­ion, 53^rd Venice Bien­nale, Venice (2009). Recent group exhi­bi­tions include, Free/​State, Ade­laide Bien­ni­al, Art Gallery of South Aus­tralia, Ade­laide (2022); Hyper Real, Nation­al Gallery of Aus­tralia (2017); Inte­ri­or and the Col­lec­tors, La Bien­nale de Lyon (2015); VIDEONALE.15, Kun­st­mu­se­um, Bonn (2015); 2014 Busan Bien­nale, MoCA Busan (2014); Cal­i­for­nia-Pacif­ic Tri­en­ni­al, Orange Coun­ty Muse­um, Cal­i­for­nia (2013); and Walk­ing Side­ways, Insti­tute of Con­tem­po­rary Arts, Lon­don (2013).

Shaun Gladwell’s works are held in muse­um col­lec­tions includ­ing, Muse­um of Con­tem­po­rary Art Aus­tralia, Syd­ney; Muse­um of Con­tem­po­rary Art, San Diego; Muse­um of Con­tem­po­rary Art, Tokyo; Muse­um of Fine Art, Hous­ton; Muse­um of Mod­ern Art (MoMA), New York; Nation­al Gallery of Aus­tralia, Can­ber­ra; Nation­al Gallery of Vic­to­ria, Mel­bourne; Orange Coun­ty Muse­um of Art, Cal­i­for­nia; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney.