b. 1964, Birkenhead, U.K.; lives and works in London, U.K.

Mark Leckey is a British contemporary artist working with sculpture, film, installation, and performance. Incorporating the use of found objects and imagery as well as extensive use of sound and music in his work, he deals with feelings of nostalgia and anxiety and draws on elements of popular and counter-cultural histories. Thinking through personal biography and autofictions in his work, the critical impulse is toward defining and understanding communities and people and their situation within British society. There is a romanticism and veneration of the people who shape and are shaped by culture both now and historically and Leckey’s work presents a submission to the will of the cultural landscape in many ways. The work simultaneously absorbs the cultural environments it circulates within, whether an underpass, a nightclub, or a bus shelter, and also gives shape to that culture via presentations across myriad forms such as radio broadcasting, lectures, educational settings, and exhibitions. The work exists as a folk archive of sorts, where the conventions of conceptual art and its regular modes of address are undermined to the extent that the work can feel closer to the realities of life at times than to the cultural institutions that pertain to house them.

Mark Leckey's recent projects include Carry Me Into the Wilderness, Cabinet, London (2022); O’ MAGIC POWER OF BLEAKNESS, Galerie Buccholz, Berlin (2021); The Body Electric, Museum of Art and Design, Miami Dade College, Miami (2020); Nobodaddy, Director’s Programme, Glasgow International 2018, Tramway, Glasgow (2018); Art in the Age of the Internet, 1989 to Today, ICA Boston, Boston (2018); Optik Schröder II, Museum für Moderne Kunst, Vienna (2018); Ten Days Six Nights, Tate Modern, London (2018); He Thrusts his Fists against the Posts but Still Insists he Sees the Ghosts, Statens Museum for Kunst, National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen (2017); Containers and Their Drivers, MoMA PS1, New York (2016); Dream English Kid 1964 - 1999 AD, Galerie Buchholz, Berlin (2016); Liverpool Biennial, Blade Factory, Camp and Furnace, Liverpool (2016); We Transfer, Secession, Vienna (2015); Enchantment to Vulgar Materials, Wiels Contemporary Art Center, Brussels (2014); The Universal Addressability of Dumb Things, Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham (2013); A Journey Through London Subculture: 1980s to Now, Institute of Contemporary Arts Off-site, London (2013); Biennale di Venezia - 55th International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia, Venice (2013); Mark Leckey: Work and Leisure, Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester (2012); White Oxford Cotton, Cabinet, London (2012); Video Killed the Radio Star, MOMA Warsaw, Warsaw (2012); Remote Control, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (2012); SEE, WE ASSEMBLE, Serpentine Gallery, London (2011) Turner Prize 2008, Tate Britain, London (2008).

For further information about this artist please click here.