Melanie Gilligan

Melanie Gilligan, born in Toronto in 1979, currently lives and works in London and New York.

She completed a B.A. (Hons) in Fine Art at Central Saint Martins, London (2002) and was a Fellow with the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Independent Study Programme, New York (2004-2005). She works in a variety of media including video, performance, text, installation and music, which all examine relationships between politics, aesthetics, and their political economy. Recent exhibitions were held at Presentation House Gallery, Vancouver (2010), Banff Centre, Alberta (2010), Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne, Germany, Transmission Gallery, Glasgow, Scotland (2008), and Franco Soffiantino Gallery, Turin, Italy (2009). In 2008, Gilligan released Crisis in the Credit System, a four-part fictional mini drama about the recent financial crisis, made specifically for internet viewing and distribution, commissioned and produced by Artangel Interaction. She has also realised a single screen film Self-capital (2009), commissioned by the Institute of Contemporary Arts London as part of the group exhibition Talk Show. Critical writing is part of her practice, and she has contributed to art magazines and journals such as Texte zur Kunst and Artforum. In 2009, Gilligan was the recipient of a Paul Hamlyn Award for Artists. [Source: VOX, 2012]