Alex Chinneck

Alex Chinneck MRSS (born 1984) is a British sculptor known for creating temporary public artworks.

Alex Chinneck
Alex Chinneck standing next to A Pound of Flesh for 50p
Born1984 (age 35–36)
NationalityBritish
EducationChelsea College of Arts, Royal British Society of Sculptors
Known forPublic art, sculpture
Notable work
A Pound of Flesh for 50p
From the knees of my nose to the belly of my toes
Under the weather but over the moon

Early life

Alex was educated at Bedford Modern School, where his father taught PE.[1] He had ambitions to become a cricketer, having captained his school team at county level, before his interest in art at the age of 16.[2] He studied painting at Chelsea College of Arts, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts, and became a member of the Royal Society of Sculptors.[3]

Career

Shortly after college, he was granted a Gilbert Bayes award by the Royal Society of Sculptors to help in his transition to professional practice, following which he collaborated with Conrad Shawcross on his work.[4] After initially focusing on small sculptures, influenced by House designed by Rachel Whiteread and the work of Richard Wilson, Chinneck started working on large scale designs.[5]

Most of Chinneck's installations feature across Greater London. His early works include Telling the Truth Through False Teeth (2012), where the artist used 1,248 pieces of glass to create 312 identically smashed windows across the derelict facade of a factory in Hackney, From the Knees of my Nose to the Belly of my Toes (2013) in Margate where Chinneck created the illusion that the entire facade of house had slid into the garden, and Under the Weather but Over the Moon (2013), a commercial property situated on Blackfriars Road created to look as if it had become completely inverted.[6][7] For his work in Hackney, local residents have described Chinneck as the "Banksy of Glass".[8][9]

His more recent works include Take my Lightning but Don't Steal my Thunder (2014), a building located in Covent Garden designed to appear as if it floated in the air, and A Pound of Flesh for 50p (2014), a house on Southwark Street made from 7,500 paraffin wax bricks which slowly melted.[10][11] The installation, Pick Yourself Up and Pull Yourself Together (2015) saw a Vauxhall Corsa suspended upside down in Southbank Centre car park.[12] The Guardian called Chinneck a "master of architectural illusion".[5]

Selected works
A bullet from a shooting star 2015
gollark: Maybe rename it, that's non-obvious.
gollark: What's "exposures"? Publicness levels?
gollark: Actually, the casing is !!INCONSISTENT!!.
gollark: Why is Me uppercased?
gollark: I think this should adequately describe our findings.

References
  1. "Artist turns the house upside down in Blackfriars". Bedfordshire News. Retrieved 29 December 2014.
  2. Mohammed, Syma (19 October 2013). "Hackney artist wins acclaim for house that appears to be falling down". Hackney Gazette. Retrieved 26 November 2014.
  3. "Alex Chinneck MRBS". Royal British Society of Sculptors. Retrieved 26 November 2014.
  4. Lingham, Daniel (26 June 2014). "Interview with Alex Chinneck". Sculpture Vox. Retrieved 26 November 2014.
  5. Wainwright, Oliver (2 October 2014). "Property boom: Alex Chinneck's brain-spinning trick in Covent Garden". The Guardian. Retrieved 25 November 2014.
  6. Macdonald, Fiona (10 October 2014). "Alex Chinneck: The man who makes houses melt". BBC. Archived from the original on 11 October 2014. Retrieved 26 November 2014.
  7. Karbowska, Iwona (4 December 2013). "In pictures: 'The Upside Down House' art installation unveiled". The Independent. Retrieved 26 November 2014.
  8. "Telling the Truth Through False Teeth by Alex Chinneck". Dezeen. Retrieved 28 November 2014.
  9. Milliard, Coline (18 July 2012). ""Banksy of Glass" Pushes Broken Window Theory to New Heights". Blouinartinfo. Retrieved 26 November 2014.
  10. Weingus, Leigh (30 October 2014). "This Creepy Wax House Is Slowly Melting to the Ground in the Middle of London". The Huffington Post. Retrieved 31 October 2014.
  11. Alleyne, Allyssia (25 November 2014). "Strange case of the melting house: Alex Chinneck's mind-bending buildings". CNN. Retrieved 30 March 2015.
  12. Livingstone, Cheryl (19 February 2015). "Artist gets behind the wheel of new Vauxhall sculpture". The Press and Journal. Retrieved 6 March 2015.
  13. "Alex Chinneck". The Line. Retrieved 6 August 2020.
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