To the Old World (Thank You for the Use of Your Body)
November 16, 2021 — March 1, 2022
To the Old World (Thank You for the Use of Your Body) is an urgent prayer to broken glass and haunted concrete, a dazzling invocation of a contemporary suburban mythos. Transfiguring found footage of a young man smashing through a bus stop into an auspicious omen of transition and transformation, Leckey enacts a supernatural shattering of the mundane surface of contemporary life. “There is a line from the song ‘I Love The Sound Of Breaking Glass’ by Nick Lowe that goes: “I love the sound of breaking glass. Deep into the night. I love the sound of its condition,” explains Leckey. “And he’s in that condition and I’m in that condition, whatever that condition is. I guess I was trying to describe what it might be.
Work
About
Photo by Jeremy Liebman
Mark Leckey (b. 1964, Birkenhead, United Kingdom) lives and works in London. Leckey’s dynamic practice takes various forms including video, installation, performance, and sound, to address notions of memory and class, desire and identity. His work focuses on the effects of technology on popular culture, often through the rhetoric of British youth and subcultures.
Leckey’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Espace Louis Vuitton, Tokyo (2024); Julia Stoschek Collection, Berlin (2022, 2020); Tate Britain, London (2019); Glasgow International, Scotland (2018); MoMA PS1, New York (2016-2017); Museo Madre, Naples, Italy (2015) Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany (2015); WIELS Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels, Belgium (2014); the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2013); Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham, United Kingdom (2013); Banff Centre, Alberta, Canada (2012); Serpentine Gallery, London (2011); Abrons Art Center, New York (2009); and the Guggenheim Museum, New York (2008); He has participated in the Belgrade Biennial (2021), Carnegie International (2013), 55th Venice Biennale (2013), and 8th Gwangju Biennial (2010). In 2008, Leckey was awarded the Turner Prize.
