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.
