John Gerrard

Irish artist born in Dublin in 1974, working between Dublin and Vienna. Gerrard builds real-time computer simulations of geopolitical, energy and environmental sites — each work runs continuously in software, sometimes for years, advancing in lockstep with the time of day at the location being modelled. Western Flag (Spindletop, Texas) (2017), a virtual flag of black smoke flying over the site of the first major oil gusher, has been shown at the Hirshhorn, Somerset House and the Hayward and is widely cited as one of the defining new media works of the 2010s. In 2021 he tokenised it as his first NFT, with proceeds funding the regenerate.farm crypto-environmental fund. The following year he became the inaugural Pace Verso × Art Blocks artist with Petro National, a 196-edition generative series mapping per-capita oil consumption to iridescent country-shaped oil spills; in 2023 he extended that practice into World Flag (195 ed.) and in 2024–25 into the Feral File year-long Crystalline Work (Arctic). He is represented by Pace Gallery.