Ian Davenport

Ian Davenport was born in Kent, England, in 1966. He graduated from Goldsmiths College of Art, London, in 1988 and as one of the generation of Young British Artists; he participated in the seminal 1988 exhibition Freeze. In 1991 he was shortlisted for the Turner Prize, for which he remains the youngest ever nominee, and in 1999 was a prize winner in the John Moores Exhibition, Liverpool. Two years after graduating Davenport had his first solo show at Waddington Galleries, London, in 1990.

Davenport has exhibited extensively and completed major commissions across the world. In 2023 his first museum show dedicated solely to works on paper opened at The Burton at Bideford, Devon. Other major institutional exhibitions include Dallas Contemporary, Texas (2018); Tate Liverpool (2000); Ikon Gallery, Birmingham (2004); and Dundee Contemporary Arts (1999). In 2022 Davenport installed a poured staircase at the Chiostro Del Bramante in Rome, and the following year, in 2023, his poured staircase Tide was unveiled at the Greenwich Peninsula in London.

At the 2017 Venice Biennale he presented an installation of over 1,000 stripes, a commission by Swatch, together with a Swatch Art special watch. In 2016 he hand-painted a series of porcelain plates in collaboration with Meissen, commissioned by South London Gallery, and designed a special edition bag for Christian Dior's Lady Art project. In 2006 he made Poured Lines: Southwark Street, London, a 48 metre wide painting on a bridge which remains one of the largest permanent public artworks in the UK. The first monograph of his work was published by Thames & Hudson in 2014.

Davenport's work is held in important museum collections including, Arts Council of Great Britain; Tate, London; Centre Pompidou, Paris; National Museum Wales, Cardiff; Von der Heydt Museum, Wuppertal; Museum of Modern Art, La Spezia; Borusan Art Gallery, Istanbul; Museum of Modern Art, New York and Dallas Museum of Art, Texas.

Cristea Roberts Gallery is the exclusive worldwide representative for Ian Davenport's original prints.

Ian Davenport lives and works in London.