John Gerrard (b. Dublin 1974) is widely regarded as a key contemporary figure in the development of digital media. Deceptively looking like film or video, his works are simulations – virtual worlds, made using real-time computer graphics, a technology developed by the military and now used extensively in the gaming industry. Often exploring geographically isolated locations – be they the agrarian American Great Plains, remote reaches of the Gobi Desert, or sites of military exercises in Djibouti – the works frequently refer to structures of power and networks of energy that have coincided with the expansion of human endeavor in the past century.
Gerrard’s work is in the collection of Tate, London; MoMA, New York; SF Moma, San Francisco; LACMA, Los Angeles; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington; Kistefos Collection, Norway; IMMA, Dublin; Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul and many private collections internationally.
