Julian Opie

Internationally acclaimed as one of the most resourceful and engaging younger artists in Britain, Julian Opie has been exhibiting his diverse work since the early 1980s, and has steadily gained a reputation stretching from Europe to Japan and the United States. He first established himself with painted steel sculptures of ordinary objects - typewriters, books, food, luggage - and of Old Master canvases. Since then, he has worked in a proliferation of styles: colourful abstract sculptures; mysteriously pseudo-functional objects resembling air vents, light boxes and lavatory cubicles; space-filling wood constructions with cryptic titles. His latest pieces feature subjects from austere acrylic paintings and concrete models of motorways to miniature houses, castles and fortifications.