On Cats, Clocks, Rocks, Fables, Melting Snowmen and Magic 8-Balls

On Cats, Clocks, Rocks, Fables, Melting Snowmen and Magic 8-Balls

A conversation with Ryan Gander

• Monday, April 28^th , 2025, 5:30pm
• OCAD U Centre for Emerging Artists and Designers
  115 McCaul Street, 3^rd floor

• Public welcome, No RSVP required

   

Please join us for a conversation with acclaimed British artist Ryan Gander on the afternoon before the launch of his new permanent public sculpture The Cat, the Clock and the Rock at 234 Simcoe Street, Toronto. We will speak about his diverse artistic practice and discuss the collaborations he has developed with OCAD U students over the past few years.

Photo: Ryan Gander A Melted Snowman workshop September 26, 2022
Photo Credit: Scott Lalonde

For more information, please contact Derek Sullivan, dsullivan@ocadu.ca

About Ryan Gander

Ryan Gander OBE RA (b. 1976. Chester, UK) is an artist living and working across Suffolk and London in the UK. Over the past two decades, Gander has established an international reputation through a vast and pluralistic body of artworks that materialise in many different forms, ranging from sculpture, apparel and writing to architecture, painting, typefaces, publications and performance.

Through associative thought processes that connect the everyday and the esoteric, the overlooked and the commonplace, Gander’s work involves a questioning of language and knowledge, a reinvention of the modes of appearance and creation of an artwork. His work can be reminiscent of a puzzle, a network with multiple connections, the fragments of an embedded story, a huge set of hidden clues to be deciphered, encouraging viewers to make their own connections and invent their own narrative in order to solve the charade with its many solutions, staged by the artist.

Gander studied at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK, the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam, NL and the Jan van Eyck Akademie, Maastricht, NL. The artist has been a Professor of Visual Art at the Universities of Huddersfield and Suffolk and holds an honorary Doctor of the Arts at the Manchester Metropolitan University and the University of Suffolk. In 2017 he was awarded an OBE for services to contemporary arts. In 2019 he was awarded the Hodder Fellowship at Princeton University. In 2022, he was made RA for the category of Sculpture.

Recent solo shows have been held at Ishikawa Cultural Foundation, Okayama, JP; Tokyo Opera City, JP; TARO NASU, Tokyo, JP; Lisson Gallery, New York, US; Kunsthalle Bern, CH; Esther Schipper, Berlin, DE; BASE / Progeo per l’arte, Florence, IT; gb Agency, Paris, FR; Lisson Gallery, London, UK; The Na8onal Museum of Art, Osaka, JP; Hyundai Gallery, Seoul, SK; Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver, CA; Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, AU; Singapore Tyler Print Ins8tute, Singapore, SG; Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester, UK.

* This event is sponsored by Lanterra Developments, who has commissioned Gander to produce a permanent public artwork for their new Artists Alley development at 234 Simcoe Street.