Artist : Marcus Harvey
Title : Sand Castle
Medium : stoneware ceramic
Size : 25 x 20 x 20 cm


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Marcus Harvey makes highly worked figurative paintings and sculptures. He seeks out imagery that is emblematic of a brutish but proud Britishness. Often his imagery is problematic or controversial, his most infamous work perhaps being ‘Myra’ which was exhibited as part of the groundbreaking YBA exhibition ‘Sensation’ in 1997. Unprecedented international media attention ensued as the painting had been created with repeated child’s handprints in the image of the infamous child-murderer Myra Hindley. This chilling painting derived much of its potency from the iconography of photographic image so engrained in the British Psyche through years of obsessive media reproduction. Recently, Harvey has started to work extensively with ceramics, forging motifs and emblems of Britishness into collaged portraits of historical British figures of foes from history, from Nelson to Margaret Thatcher and from Napoleon to Tony Blair. He works the imagery, handling the clay in a battle to find its form despite multiple firings and emerging knowledge on behalf of the artist with regards to glazing and firing technique. The result is tough but humorous sculpture, unapologetic and brash, political yet ambiguous, considered and painterly.

Harvey was born in Leeds in 1963 and lives and works in London. He graduated from Goldsmith’s College in the late1980’s along with the other members of the group now known as Young British Artists (YBAs). He has participated in several important group exhibitions such as ‘Some Went Mad, Some Ran Away’, Serpentine Gallery, London (1994) and‘Sensation’, Royal Academy, London (1997). Harvey’s solo exhibitions include White Cube, London (1994), TanyaBonakdar, New York (1995), Mary Boone, Gallery, New York (2002), Galleria Marabini, Bologna (2005), ‘Inselaffe’ – Jerwood Gallery (2016). His works are held in numerous international collections including the Stedelijk Museum,Amsterdam; The British Council Collection, London; Berado Museum in lisbon, and prominent private collections includingthe “Murder Me” collection of artist Damien Hirst, UK; the Saatchi Collection, UK; the Logan Collection, San Francisco; the Burger Collection, Hong Kong; and the Seavest Collection.



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