Shaun Gladwell (b. 1972) is an Australian-born, London-based artist. He completed Associate Research at Goldsmiths College, London in 2001 and has since undertaken numerous international residencies and commissions. He has exhibited prodigiously in Europe, North and South America, and in the Asia Pacific Region.
"[The artist] erupted onto the Australian art scene with the 2000 video work 'Storm Sequence,' a self-portrait in which the artist is skateboarding in extreme slow-motion as a storm brews over Bondi Beach. He has since developed an international reputation for his evocative large-scale video works, photographs and sculptures - and represented Australia at the Venice Biennale in 2009. Gladwell uses filmic devices such as slow-motion and long pans to capture both tightly choreographed and improvised performances by break dancers, skateboarders, and BMX bike riders in a combination of rural and city settings in Australia, Japan, Brazil, France and Afghanistan. The resulting works, which he describes as "performative landscapes" are both rhythmic and poetic - distorting speed, gravity, space and time; exploring visual and spatial paradoxes."
- Australian Centre for the Moving Image
Gladwell has exhibited Internationally in venues such as the Royal Academy of Arts (London), the Orange County Museum of Art (CA), KUAD Gallery (Istanbul), Palais de Tokyo (Paris), and the Museum of Lyon (France). Gladwell's work is included in the public collections of the Art Gallery of New South Wales (Sydney), Museum of Contemporary Art (Sydney), Museum of Contemporary Art (Tokyo), Museum of Fine Arts Houston (TX), Orange County Museum of Art (CA), Progressive Art Collection (PA), SCHUNCK (Heerlen), VideoBrasil (Brazil), Wadsworth Atheneum (CT), among many others. The artist lives and works in the UK.
