GARY HUME

Early Years

Gary Hume was born in Tenterden in Kent in 1962 and raised by a single mother who worked as an NHS surgery manager. He left school aged 16 with no qualifications, but did odd jobs and studied life drawing at a college in Camden, London. After two years studying art at a technical college, he spent a year at Liverpool Polytechnic before transferring to Goldsmiths in London to finish his degree, working alongside artists who would become household names including Tracey Emin and Damien Hirst. He graduated in 1988.

Gary Hume: Artworks

Gary Hume became widely known during the early 1990s for his high-gloss paintings featuring flat planes of colour. Originally painting on board and canvas, he switched to painting on aluminium panels. He paints animals, flowers, birds and portraits, taking inspiration from memory but also from found images, which he projects on to the aluminium surface, then scratches their outlines and contours into the enamel or otherwise creates small walls between which his gloss paint can flow. His palette is bright pastel, with pink, purple and aquamarine, and when the gloss dries it appears to be plastic.

• Hume’s Door Paintings were large-scale abstract pieces modelled on measurements taken from double swing doors at St Bartholemew’s Hospital in London. The series, completed during the late 1980s and early 1990s, mimicked all the features of the doors, from kickplates to porthole windows. Because they were the same scale as actual hospital, the Door Paintings muddle the distinction between object and art.
• Hume produced his Water Paintings series, large-scale works featuring overlapping outlines of female figures, for the 48th Venice Biennale in 1999, in which he represented Great Britain.
• The Wonky Wheel series of the early 2010s comprised bright, colourful abstract sculptures in steel and enamel and accompanying paintings. The shapes of the large wheels were manipulated by Hume to create forms that appear to balance precariously, referencing the imperfect wheel of life and the “wonky” progression of lived experience.

Gary Hume: Select Solo Exhibitions

• Gary Hume, Matthew Marks Gallery, New York City (2026)
• Mirrors and other creatures, Sprüth Magers, London (2024)
• Fragment of a Rainbow III, Royal Academy of Arts, London (2021)
• Archipelago, Sprüth Magers, London (2020)
• Looking and Seeing, Barakat Contemporary, Seoul (2019)
• Mum, Sprüth Magers, London (2017) (and touring)
• Front of a Snowman, Aspen Art Museum (2016)
• Lions and Unicorns, White Cube, Sao Paolo (2014)
• Gary Hume, Tate Britain, London (2013)
• The Wonky Wheel, Matthew Marks Gallery, New York City (2013)
• Flashback, Leeds Art Gallery (2012) (and touring)
• Bird in a Fish Tank, Sprüth Magers, Berlin (2010)
• Door Paintings, Modern Art Oxford (2008)
• Angels, Flowers and Icons, Hastings Museum and Art Gallery (2007)
• Cave Paintings, White Cube, London (2006)
• Gary Hume, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2003)
• British Pavilion, Venice Biennale (1999)
• Gary Hume, Galleria il Ponte, Rome (1996)
• Gary Hume. New Works, Galerie Tanja Grünert, Cologne (1993)
• Recent Works, Karsten Schubert Ltd, London (1989)

Select Group Exhibitions

• 10 Years LA!, Sprüth Magers, Los Angeles (2026)
• Land, The Art Station, Saxmundham, Suffolk (2025)
• Coming Attractions: The John Waters Collection, Baltimore Museum of Art (2022)
• New Order: Art, Product, Image 1976 —1995, Sprüth Magers, London (2019)
• Seeing Around Corners, Turner Contemporary, Margate (2016)
• Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2012, Royal Academy of the Arts, London (2012)
• Underwater, Western Bridge, Seattle (2009)
• Lines, Grids, Stains, Words, MoMA, New York City (2007)
• Art of the Garden, Tate Britain, London (2004)
• Painting the Century, The National Portrait Gallery, London (2000)
• Jerwood Painting Prize 1997, Lethaby Galleries, Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, London (1997)
• General Release: Young British Artists, Scuola San Pasquale, Venice Bienniale (1995)
• Brilliant! New art from London, The Walker Art Centre, Minneapolis (1995) (and touring)
• Wonderful Life, Lisson Gallery, London (1993)
• The British Art Show 1990, Hayward Gallery, London (1990) (and touring)
• Freeze. Part II, Surrey Docks, London (1988)

Further Reading

• Gary Hume’s Instagram
• Artist profile page at Sprüth Magers
• Artist profile page at Matthew Marks Gallery
• 2024 interview in the Guardian

Gary Hume FAQs

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