Simon Starling
Simon Starling (born 30 May 1967 in Epsom, England) is a contemporary English conceptual artist. In 2023, his public sculpture Husbåd til Ho was installed in Ho, Denmark, donated by the Danish Arts Foundation and Varde Municipality.
Starling studied photography and art at Maidstone College of Art (1986–1987), then at Trent Polytechnic in Nottingham (1987–1990), and finally at Glasgow School of Art (1990–1992). From 1993 to 1996 he served on the committee of Transmission Gallery in Glasgow.
His work has earned major recognition. He received the Blinky Palermo Grant in 1999, was shortlisted for the Hugo Boss Prize in 2004, and won the Turner Prize in 2005 for Shedboatshed, a project where a wooden shed was turned into a boat, sailed down the Rhine, and transformed back into a shed.
Starling’s works are in many leading museums around the world, including Tate Modern in London, Moderna Museet in Stockholm, the Guggenheim Museum in New York, Kröller-Müller Museum in the Netherlands, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, and Museum Folkwang in Essen. He has had notable solo exhibitions at venues such as Japan Society in New York (2016), Tate St Ives (2011), Power Plant in Toronto (2008), Museum Folkwang in Essen (2007), Kunstmuseum Basel (2005), and MoMA in Sydney (2002). In 2003 he represented Scotland at the 50th Venice Biennale.
Starling lives and works in Copenhagen and Berlin. He has taught at the Städelschule art academy in Frankfurt, and Nottingham Trent University named him Alumnus of the Year in 2007.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 13:36 (CET).