Ryan Gander

From one passionate advocate of art education to another…. Yesterday’s artist Bob & Roberta Smith is a seasoned cultural campaigner whose lockdown instagram has posted a daily ‘art task’ alongside regular footage of Bob in his new shirt emblazoned with the legend ART IS YOUR HUMAN RIGHT.

Today’s artist, Ryan Gander, is equally committed to the cause. A couple of months ago, as lockdown took hold, he sent out an instagram message offering ‘free tutorials’ for final year BA and MA students to discuss their work via email. The response was so overwhelming that he had to enlist the help of other artist friends including Ahmet Ögüt to fulfil the demand. It’s a fantastic gesture of generosity that fits the times.


Today’s entry is a new work made by Ryan over the past weeks which turns the formalities of educational assessment inside out. Ryan’s I can not yet even describe it to myself, takes the form of a stack of ‘A’ Level Art and Design exam papers for the year 2027 written, as he puts it “from the perspective that the world is populated by artists that understand, and are honest about, their own impetus for making artworks”. It’s a wry (and occasionally biting) satire on the fallacy of pursuing success for its own sake.

Ryan was the fourteenth artist to make a work for our ‘Billboard for Edinburgh’ project, in the autumn of 2011.