Erin Shirreff

Biography

Erin Shirreff was born in 1975 in Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada, and now lives and works in New York. Shirreff studied sculpture, but her practice is now focused on depicting and challenging the representation of three-dimensional art objects through photography and video.

Often building maquettes of large-scale works in her studio, Shirreff then manipulates the light and conditions surrounding the objects before documenting them using digital and analog tools. Her source material has included the minimalist sculpture of Tony Smith and the Oscar Niemeyer-designed United Nations Headquarters in New York as well as James Turrell’s Roden Crater and the lake where she grew up. Describing her videos as “psychologically driven,” Shirreff explains, “My videos don’t have any beginning or end. Every moment contains it, hopefully.”