Richard Wright

Richard Wright is best known for his site-specific yet transient works that unite painting with graphic and typographic elements, charging architectural spaces with a fourth dimension of subtle yet extreme optical complexity and subverting the traditionally static dynamic between painting and viewer. His paintings and applied metal-leaf schemes connote memory and ephemerality—these works are short-lived, oftentimes lasting only as long as the exhibition. Alongside works on interior surfaces such as walls and ceilings, Wright’s works on paper encompass a range of handmade prints, ink drawings, gilding, and watercolors. More recently, Wright has installed leaded glass into existing window or skylight apertures, allowing the work to meld with the fabric of the building. These interventions, utilizing various mediums, serve to shift the viewer’s perception of the space. As Sofia Karamani commented in her text for the Turner Prize in 2009:

“Wright’s profound understanding of art and its history is reflected in his diverse imagery; minimalist patterns and baroque ornamentations to gothic iconography and typography. His wall paintings can occupy whole rooms, appearing convoluted and extensive, to create a sublime impact. Others, subtle and delicate, are awkwardly placed, claiming a modest existence on a ceiling, a cornice, the edge of a wall. As Wright invents alternative spatial arrangements, solid structures can look broken up, reconfigured, or seem transparent and fluid.”

Wright was born in 1960 in London. The first solo exhibition of his work took place in 1994 at Transmission Gallery in Glasgow, Scotland. His work has been shown in major exhibitions worldwide since, including Kunsthalle Bern, Switzerland (2001); Tate Liverpool, England (2001); Dundee Contemporary Arts, Scotland (2004); GAMeC, Bergamo, Italy (2005); Carnegie International, Pittsburgh (2008); Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh (2010); Theseus Temple, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (2013); and Walk through British Art, Tate Britain, London (2013). In addition to permanent private commissions, Wright’s public institutional commissions include the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (2007); Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, England (2007); Dean Gallery, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh (2010); The Millbank Project at Tate Britain, London (2011–13); Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (2013), Drawing Biennial, Oslo (2014); and Queen’s House, London (2016).

Wright was awarded the Turner Prize in 2009 and is considered one of the key artists in the generation that emerged out of Glasgow in the 1990s, together with Martin Boyce, Douglas Gordon, and Simon Starling.In 2016 Wright was commissioned to make a vast permanent gold leaf work for the 400th anniversary of the Inigo Jones-designed Queen’s House (now part of the Royal Museums Greenwich), which was the first fully Classically designed building in the UK. Wright’s work cloaks the whole ceiling and upper walls of the Great Hall.

In 2018 he was commissioned by the Crossrail Art Programme to make a vast ceiling work more than eighty feet long at Tottenham Court Road station for London’s new Elizabeth railway line, projected to open in 2022.

Wright lives and works in Norfolk, England, and Glasgow, Scotland.