ARTIST

A principal figure of British conceptual art, Michael Craig-Martin probes the relationship between objects and images, harnessing the human capacity to imagine absent forms through symbols and pictures. The perceptual tension between object, representation, and language has been his central concern over the past four decades. In his early work Craig-Martin often incorporated readymades into sculpture and made knowing reference to American Minimalism. His elegant restraint and conceptual clarity is exemplified by An Oak Tree (1973), comprising a glass of water on a shelf and a text written by him asserting that the glass of water is, in fact, an oak tree. This interest in semantics, the play between rhetoric and object, continues to be a core theme in his work. In the 1990s Craig-Martin made a decisive shift to painting and developed his hallmark style of precise, bold outlines demarcating flat planes of intensely vibrant colors. Through exacting draftsmanship, he uses composition to explore spatial relationships by juxtaposing and layering color.

Craig-Martin was born in 1941 in Dublin. He attended Fordham University, New York, from 1959 to 1961, then Yale University, where he received a BA in 1963 and an MFA in 1966. In the mid-1960s he returned to Europe, becoming one of the key figures in the first generation of British conceptual artists. Craig-Martin taught at Goldsmiths College School of Art, London, from 1974 to 1988 and from 1994 to 2000. During this time he became a powerful influence on a generation of his students who would become known as the Young British Artists, including Gary Hume, Sarah Lucas, and Damien Hirst, among others. 

In 2016 he was knighted in the Queen’s Birthday Honours for his services to art.

CHARITY

Centrepoint has been supporting young people for over fifty years. Since starting out as a night shelter in 1969, their work with young people has become much more rounded – helping them to get healthy and stay healthy; to re-engage with education and training; to acquire important skills for life; to get into and stay in employment; and to move on into a home of their own. Over the past strategic period they have grown their impact to support nearly 20,000 young people a year, compared to 8,000 in 2015. With the establishment of the Centrepoint Helpline in 2017, the support they offer directly to young people spans the whole country, and more than half of the young people they support are outside of London.

Centrepoint are proud of the part they have played in giving homeless young people a future. But now they face new and even greater challenges. More than 100,000 young people approach their Local Authority every year because they are homeless or at risk. The gap between the number of houses needed to ensure everybody has a decent home and the stock of houses is over 1 million homes. Youth unemployment is rising at a greater rate as a result of the global pandemic. We are in a mental health crisis, with mental health issues reported in over half (54.1%) of homeless young people. Centrepoint is needed more than ever before.