Martin John Callanan (born 1982) is a British conceptual artist working in Scotland.

Biography

Martin John Callanan was born in 1982 in

Solihull Solihull ( ) is a market town and the administrative centre of the Metropolitan Borough of Solihull, in the West Midlands (county), West Midlands, England. Solihull is situated on the River Blythe in the Arden, Warwickshire, Forest of Arden ar ...

. He works in Scotland. He taught at the

Slade School of Fine Art The UCL Slade School of Fine Art (informally The Slade) is the art school of University College London (UCL) and is based in London, England. It has been ranked as the UK's top art and design educational institution. The school is organised as ...

from 2008 to 2019. Key exhibitions include

White Cube White Cube is a contemporary art gallery founded by Jay Jopling in London in 1993. The gallery has two branches in London: White Cube Mason's Yard in central London and White Cube Bermondsey in South East London; White Cube Hong Kong, in Centra ...

Mason's Yard, Or Gallery, Berlin, Casal Solleric, Spain,

Whitechapel Gallery The Whitechapel Gallery is a public art gallery in Whitechapel on the north side of Whitechapel High Street, in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. The original building, designed by Charles Harrison Townsend, opened in 1901 as one of the fi ...

, London,

Imperial War Museum The Imperial War Museum (IWM), currently branded "Imperial War Museums", is a British national museum. It is headquartered in London, with five branches in England. Founded as the Imperial War Museum in 1917, it was intended to record the civ ...

International Film Festival Rotterdam International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) is an annual film festival held at the end of January in various locations in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, focused on independent and experimental films. The inaugural festival took place in June 1972, ...

and

Whitstable Biennale Whitstable () is a town on the north coast of Kent, England, at the convergence of the The Swale, Swale and the Greater Thames Estuary, north of Canterbury and west of Herne Bay, Kent, Herne Bay. The town, formerly known as Whitstable-on-Se ...

. In 2013 Callanan was awarded the

Philip Leverhulme Prize The Philip Leverhulme Prize is awarded by the Leverhulme Trust to recognise the achievement of outstanding researchers whose work has already attracted international recognition and whose future career is exceptionally promising. The prize sche ...

, an award for young academic researchers. Callanan worked with the

Bank of England The Bank of England is the central bank of the United Kingdom and the model on which most modern central banks have been based. Established in 1694 to act as the Kingdom of England, English Government's banker and debt manager, and still one ...

for 12 months from July 2015, and was a Fellow of the

Royal Society of Arts The Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, commonly known as the Royal Society of Arts (RSA), is a learned society that champions innovation and progress across a multitude of sectors by fostering creativity, s ...

Artworks

Well known artworks include, "The Fundamental Units", a collaboration with the National Physical Laboratory imaging the world's lowest domination coins to massive scale using the latest microscopes. ''I Wanted to See All of the News From Today'', a web based program collecting front covers of newspapers from around the world, won an Honorary mention (best online project) at Live 2011 Grand Prix (

Finland Finland, officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It borders Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of Bothnia to the west and the Gulf of Finland to the south, ...

), and a finalist for both File Prix Lux (

Brazil Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil, is the largest country in South America. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by area, fifth-largest country by area and the List of countries and dependencies by population ...

), and Screengrab 2010 Award, (Australia) Callanan legally changed his name by

deed poll A deed poll (plural: deeds poll) is a legal document binding on a single person or several persons acting jointly to express an intention or create an obligation. It is a deed, and not a contract, because it binds only one party. Etymology Th ...

from Martin John Callanan to Martin John Callanan in 2008 and again in 2012. The latter performance, which involved a magistrate visiting the gallery, took place at the London Open at the

, London: curator Kirsty Ogg said "It highlights the fact that there is a particular bureaucratic process that we're all subject to but are not necessarily aware of". The 2012 Whitstable Biennale commissioned ''Wars During my Lifetime'', about which

New Statesman ''The New Statesman'' (known from 1931 to 1964 as the ''New Statesman and Nation'') is a British political and cultural news magazine published in London. Founded as a weekly review of politics and literature on 12 April 1913, it was at first c ...

wrote: ''"A simple idea with high impact is Wars During my Lifetime by Martin John Callanan, which lists on

newsprint Newsprint is a low-cost, non-archival paper consisting mainly of wood pulp and most commonly used to print newspapers and other publications and advertising material. Invented in 1844 by Charles Fenerty of Nova Scotia, Canada, it usually has ...

all the wars that have taken place during his lifetime."''. A

town crier A town crier, also called a bellman, is an officer of a royal court or public authority who makes public pronouncements as required. Duties and functions The town crier was used to make public announcements in the streets. Criers often dre ...

proclaimed the list along the seafront. For another artwork, published by Book Works he sent letters to several world leaders saying "I respect your authority" and published replies by figures including

Hosni Mubarak Muhammad Hosni El Sayed Mubarak (; 4 May 1928 – 25 February 2020) was an Egyptian politician and military officer who served as the fourth president of Egypt from 1981 to 2011 and the 41st Prime Minister of Egypt, prime minister from 1981 to ...

; critic

Jonathan Jones (journalist) Jonathan Jones is a British art critic who has written for ''The Guardian'' since 1999. He has appeared in the BBC television series '' Private Life of a Masterpiece'' and in 2009 was a judge for the Turner Prize. He has also been a judge for ...

found the work humorous but struggled to find any point to it: ''"He sent out a letter to various presidents saying, "I respect your authority." Amazingly, he got loads of replies. Hosni Mubarak seemed genuinely flattered. You laugh. Then you laugh again, but not so loud. Then you stop laughing and wonder what the point is. That world leaders are rather polite?"'' He has also produced an artwork out of his social media status where every update since 2007 has read "Martin John Callanan is okay". "Location of I" published Callanan's precise physical location every second for two years from 2007. The artwork was commissioned during a six-month residency at RIXC in Latvia. It was presented at "9th international festival Art+Communication held in

Liepāja Liepāja () (formerly: Libau) is a Administrative divisions of Latvia, state city in western Latvia, located on the Baltic Sea. It is the largest city in the Courland region and the third-largest in the country after Riga and Daugavpils. It is an ...

Other works

While working at UCL Environment Institute he collaborated with science writer Richard Hamblyn on a number of projects, documented in their book ''Data Soliloquies'' (Slade Press, 2009, ). ''A Planetary Order'' (2009) combines

satellite A satellite or an artificial satellite is an object, typically a spacecraft, placed into orbit around a celestial body. They have a variety of uses, including communication relay, weather forecasting, navigation ( GPS), broadcasting, scient ...

images into an advanced sculpture made using high-end

3D Printing 3D printing, or additive manufacturing, is the construction of a three-dimensional object from a CAD model or a digital 3D model. It can be done in a variety of processes in which material is deposited, joined or solidified under computer ...

, to show the planet earth covered in

clouds In meteorology, a cloud is an aerosol consisting of a visible mass of miniature liquid droplets, frozen crystals, or other particles, suspended in the atmosphere of a planetary body or similar space. Water or various other chemicals may c ...

. (Subscription required) ''Text Trends'' was based on Google searches for terms related to

climate change Present-day climate change includes both global warming—the ongoing increase in Global surface temperature, global average temperature—and its wider effects on Earth's climate system. Climate variability and change, Climate change in ...

over a five years.

References

External links

greyisgood official website

Personal Twitter

Slade Centre for Electronic Media

Rhizome Artbase Archive
{{DEFAULTSORT:Callanan, Martin John 1982 births Living people Academics of University College London Alumni of the Slade School of Fine Art English performance artists British conceptual artists English contemporary artists English installation artists People from Solihull British new media artists Photographers from Warwickshire