keith tyson

Tyson was born in Ulverston in Cumbria and served his time as a Fitter and Turner at VSEL prior to studying art at the College of Art in Carlisle and the University of Brighton. His first solo show was in 1995.

His works often bring scientific thought into art. He has used something called the Artmachine since 1991, a methodology whereby raw materials are turned into suggestions for artworks. As a result of this process, Tyson has made casts in lead of the contents of a Kentucky Fried Chicken menu and dropped a thimble of paint off a building, among other things.

Tyson represented Britain in the 2001 Venice Biennale. One of the pieces shown there was The Thinker (After Rodin), a black hexagonal structure containing a bank of computers which gave out a constant hum.

In 2002, Tyson won the Turner Prize. The other artists shortlisted for the prize were Fiona Banner, Liam Gillick and Catherine Yass. The British government's Culture Minister, Kim Howells, had visited the exhibition of the four's work at Tate Britain and left a note calling it "cold mechanical, conceptual bullshit", thus adding to the prize's customary controversy.

In a major feature in the London Sunday Times on November 30, 2003, the writer Tony Barrell said that Tyson had been dubbed the "mad professor" of art, owing to his obsessions with physics, philosophy, probability, computers, astronomy, science fiction and experimentation. Barrell said that he could equally be labelled the "Anti-Hirst", since he is as passionate about the miracle of life as the artist Damien Hirst seems to be about the inevitability of death. In an interview with Barrell, Tyson also confessed to having a "big gambling problem" and compared the game of roulette to "a religious experience".

In 2005 Tyson had a solo exhibition in New York's Pacewildenstein Gallery entitled "Geno Pheno" which explored the paradoxical nature of causality and creativity through a series of diptychs. Characteristically, a "casino night" was organised for people attending the show's opening.