Liam Gillick 1964 -

Liam Gillick was born in 1964 and studied at Goldsmiths’ College, London. He has exhibited worldwide since the early 1990s and has also been a designer, critic, author and curator.

Liam Gillick is the only one of the four artists shortlisted for this year’s Turner Prize whose name was not put forward by the public. The public selects the artists but the jury of international art experts has the power to add to these. It is easy to see why the jury wanted Gillick to be included. The Turner Prize is not just a competition, it is an exhibition and if the participating artists have interests in common, the show will have greater impact. What Liam Gillick and fellow finalists Fiona Banner and Keith Tyson share is an interest in the thought behind a work of art. It is no good seeing their work with the sole aim of appreciating its beauty. To enjoy it (and perhaps even that word raises false expectations), the viewer must be ready to think hard.

Through his structures, Liam Gillick offers a critique of our society, and in particular its failure to create a satisfactory environment. The problem for the viewer is that Gillick’s structures, which are made of industrial components, imitate the character of some of the buildings around us so successfully that they can easily pass unnoticed. Of Gillick’s Art Now installation “Annlee You Proposes” (2001), in the gardens of Tate Britain, curator Katharine Stout wrote: “Within the urban park setting we can predict that visitors will eat their sandwiches sitting on the benches and stumble across the work without quite knowing what it is.”

Like Martin Creed’s “Work NoNo227: The lights going on and off”, featured in last year’s Turner Prize, Gillick’s submission this year, “Coats of Asbestos Spangled with Mica” (as yet unassembled), focuses our attention on Tate Britain’s 1979 extension where the Turner Prize is displayed. The extension, designed by Llewellyn Davies, is made up of a series of 9mx9m modules, each surmounted by a pyramidal ceiling design. The modules are versatile and can be combined or separated according to the needs of the exhibition. The plain walls of the modules can now, with the passage of time, be seen as emblematic of the period in which they were produced. Similarly anonymous spaces can be found in hospitals and housing estates of the 1970s.

Because Creed and Gillick’s work is unassuming it forces our attention back to its environment. It thus stands in strong contrast to the intimacy of much art of the past, where the viewer is allowed to escape from present-day life. “Coats of Asbestos Spangled with Mica” is a suspended ceiling of brightly coloured Perspex panels, supported by a framework of anodised aluminium which hangs in one of the modules. The original pyramidal ceiling can be seen through the coloured Perspex but its geometry is softened. The glowing colours of the Perspex used by Gillick reflect off the walls and floor like stained glass windows but the association with ecclesiastical interiors as places of rest and recollection is tempered by the title of the work. The word “asbestos” conjures up the hazardous substance frequently used post-war as a building material.

In the Turner Prize broadsheet, the curator explains: “In his writings, (Gillick) comments on how late-modernist ideas of progress were applied to the problem of housing after the Second World War, only to be defeated, at least in Britain, by low budgets and bad management. Once this failure became apparent, the same thinking, often indeed by the same architects and designers, was applied to the corporate world.”

“I absolutely believe that visual environments change behaviours and the way people act,” says Gillick. “I’m not prescribing certain thinking - it is a softer approach than that - I’m offering an adjustment of things, which works through default. If some people just stand with their backs to the work and talk to each other, then that’s good.”

While this “soft” approach may work with Gillick’s recent redesign of the cafe in the Whitechapel Gallery, east London, where people come mainly for refreshment, it is unlikely to apply to the Turner Prize where visitors are there to view the art rather than accept it as a background. Art galleries are part of that corporate world described by the artist. The white cube designs which once were accepted as the only setting for contemporary art are now being questioned. Gillick aims to involve us in such questioning, preventing us from submitting passively to what society provides. Can you think of alternatives for the display of contemporary art?

Neither Creed nor Gillick’s work allows escapism. We are forced by it to remain conscious of our environment and question it. The environment is no longer merely the shell that encloses the art work, instead it is an essential element of the art. If you take up the artists’ challenge and follow their thoughts, you will question the appearance of your work place and your home, and analyse the architects’ intentions and the values of the society in which it was produced.

It is clear that Gillick’s concerns extend much further than art, making his work relevant to teachers of geography and sociology as well as of art and design. Although the depth of his enquiry may seem more relevant to secondary school, primary teachers could be inspired by it to embark on projects about their school and its history as well as its design and surroundings.

The Turner Prize 2002 exhibition dates at Tate Britain are October 30, 2002 to January 5, 2003. The winner will be announced on December 8.

www.tate.org.ukbritainexhibitionsturnerprize Miquette Roberts is education resources officer at Tate Britain