Marc Quinn

Archaeology of Desire

2008

Contemporary artist Marc Quinn was born in London in 1964 and is known as one of the founding figures of the 1990s British contemporary art movement, alongside artist Damien Hirst. His work includes sculpture, installation and painting and explores “what it is to be human in the world today” through subjects that include the body, genetics, identity, environment, and the media. Quinn graduated from Cambridge University in 1984 and had his first solo show in 1988 at the Jay Jopling/Otis Gallery in London. Quinn was selected for the Sydney Biennale in 1992, and was represented in Young British Artists II at the Saatchi Gallery in 1993, and Time Machine at the British Museum in 1994. He participated in Thinking Print at the Museum of Modern Art, New York in 1996 and Sensation at the Royal Academy, London in 1997. He had a solo show at the South London Gallery, Camberwell, London in 1998. Self (1991, Saatchi Collection, London) is a self-portrait head made from his own frozen blood, and was first exhibited in 1991 at the Jay Jopling/Grob Gallery and then at the Saatchi Gallery in 1992. At the Tate Gallery in 1995, Quinn showed Emotional Detox: The Seven Deadly Sins, a group of seven lead casts of parts of his body which were made using the lost wax method. Quinn prefers to use his body as a primary source because it is free from the associations of implied relationships: 'the self is what one knows best and least at the same time ... casting the body gives one an opportunity to "see" the self' (conversation with Sean Rainbird, Tate Gallery, 1995).