Elmgreen and Dragset: This is how we bite our tongue

Published to accompany the first major UK survey exhibition of artist duo Elmgreen and Dragset, featuring a newly commissioned large-scale installation designed specifically for the gallery space.

Since 1995, artists Michael Elmgreen (b. 1961, Copenhagen) and Ingar Dragset (b. 1969, Trondheim) have been producing a body of work at the intersection of art, design and architecture, drawing on subjects as diverse as social politics, personal relationships and institutional critique. In their installations and sculptures they consistently interrogate ideas around public and private space and individual and collective identity, reconfiguring the everyday with subversive wit and tongue-in-cheek melancholy. Amongst their best-known works are Prada Marfa (2005), a full scale replica of a Prada Boutique in the Texan desert; Powerless Structures, Fig. 101 (2012), a giant bronze boy on a rocking horse created for The Fourth Plinth in London’s Trafalgar Square; and Death of a Collector (2009) for the Venice Biennale, featuring a life size swimming pool complete with a besuited floating body.

In this, their first major UK exhibition, they will transform the galleries; creating a brand new, large-scale installation designed specifically for this exhibition space, and constructing a series of shrine-like tableaux featuring their hyper-realistic figures. The catalogue will journey through the exhibition, featuring new writing on each work.