John Gerrard (Irish, b. 1974) creates real-time digital simulations built with game-engine technology that render visible the hidden architectures of contemporary power, from energy networks to industrial systems and data centres.,,Born in Tipperary, he studied sculpture at Oxford's Ruskin School before earning an MFA at the Art Institute of Chicago and an MSc in New Media at Trinity College Dublin.,
His focus on ecology and extraction traces to his childhood in Tipperary, where he watched pesticides and herbicides sprayed on neighbouring farms.Solar Reserve (Tonopah, Nevada), 2014, a simulation of a solar power plant in Nevada commissioned by the Public Art Fund for Lincoln Center in New York, became his first major public simulation. In 2015, purchased with funds from Leonardo DiCaprio, it became LACMA's first simulation-based acquisition, and is also held in the permanent collection of MoMA.,Sow Farm (near Libbey, Oklahoma), 2009, is held by Tate and is among the software-based artworks addressed by the museum's long-term software preservation research.
Western Flag (Spindletop, Texas), 2017, renders a flag of smoke at the site of the Lucas Gusher oil strike in Texas.,Commissioned by Channel 4 as a television hack, it was displayed on an LED wall at Somerset House in London and livestreamed on YouTube for a month. It became a widely shared symbol of protest after Donald Trump announced in 2017 that the United States would withdraw from the Paris climate agreement.Verisart certified it as an NFT in 2021.Gerrard began releasing generative work through the Pace Verso and Art Blocks partnership in 2022 with Petro National, followed in 2023 by World Flag, 195 unique works depicting each country's flag in smoke, minted in descending order of national CO2 emissions.,His yearlong Crystalline Work (Arctic), presented on Feral File from the summer solstice of 2024, follows a virtual robot at the Arctic pole that generates ice-crystal archetypes around the clock, with a quarter of sales revenue funding the restoration of Ireland's Wild Atlantic Rainforest.,
In 2026, Western Flag (Spindletop, Texas), Flare (Oceania) and Standard were shown together for the first time as a triptych at Art Basel.An edition of Standard sold there through Fellowship for USD 500,000, the sector's highest reported sale that year.Gerrard's work is held in the permanent collections of MoMA, Tate, the Centre Pompidou, LACMA and the Van Abbemuseum.At LACMA, where an Art + Technology Lab grant supported his Neural Exchange, he undertook SPIRITS, a commission running from December 2025 to December 2026.,
