Archaeology of Desire

Materials

Bronze; 250 x 128 cm

Dating

2009

About the artwork

edition 2/5

About the artist

The former student of Barry Flanagan studied history and art history at the Robinson College at the University of Cambridge and belongs to the ‘Young British Artists’ movement. He explores the boundaries between art and science by using unusual and extraordinary materials. One of his most famous works of art is a frozen sculpture of his head made out of 4.5 litres of his own blood, which he had been collecting over a period of five months.
Another important work is the frozen garden, which he created for Miuccia Prada in 2000. The plants grew under very low temperatures and therefore never really developed. ‘Garden’ addressed several environmental problems, which became pressing later on.
Furthermore, Quinn produced a series of marble sculptures, which depict people with missing limbs. The monumental, 15 ton heavy marble sculpture of Alison Lapper, a woman who was born without arms and truncated legs, was on display on the fourth plinth at Trafalgar Square in London between 2005 and 2007.
Quinn’s portrait of John E. Sulston, who won the Noble Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on cell lineage and genome of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in London. It consists of bacteria in agar jelly and contains Sulston’s DNA.