Richard Grayson Artist
Richard Grayson (born 1958) is British artist, writer and curator. His art practice encompasses installation, video, painting and performance. His work investigates ways that narratives shape our understandings of the world. Grayson was a founder member of the Basement Group (1979–1984) in Newcastle upon Tyne. The Basement group was an artists' collective that focused on experimental time based and performance art practices. It has been described as "unique in this country [the United Kingdom] in combining two functions: it is an 'exhibiting society' for a group of six artists working in time based media (mostly performance and video), and it has up to the present provided a venue for any performing artist wishing to present work [in Newcastle]. " He has since shown at Matt's Gallery, London; SMART Project Space, Amsterdam; Art Unlimited at Art Basel 2005, Switzerland; Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Australia. Works include: Messiah, 2004, Intelligence, 2005, Ghost Houses, 2004–2007. His critical writing has been published by Art Monthly, UK and Broadsheet, Australia. He has written catagogue essays and monographs on Mark Wallinger, Roy Harper, Mike Nelson, Susan Hiller and Suzanne Treister. Between 1992 and 1998, he was Director of the Experimental Art Foundation in Adelaide, Australia. Grayson was Artistic Director of the 2002 Biennale of Sydney, titled '(The World May Be) Fantastic', which investigated 'artists and practices using fictions, narratives, invented methodologies, hypotheses, subjective belief systems, modellings, fakes and experiments as a means to make works.'. Writing in Art in America in October 2002, Michael Duncan said of the exhibition that it "gave free rein to complex, often offbeat works predicated on alternate realities. Artists included: Mike Nelson, Chris Burden, Susan Hiller, Vito Acconci, Eleanor Antin, Henry Darger, Janet Cardiff and Rodney Graham. In an article in the Sydney Morning Herald from 17 May 2002, Bruce James describes why the exhibition was "a bit of a miracle". Grayson curated 'A Secret Service: Art, Compulsion, Concealment' in 2006/7, a Hayward Gallery Touring Exhibition; 'This Will Not Happen Without You' in 2006-2007, Arts Council of England Touring exhibition.