Lennie Lee

Lennie Lee (born 4 March 1958) is a South African conceptual artist who lives and works in London.

Life and career

Lennie Lee is a British artist born in Johannesburg, South Africa. He moved to the UK in 1960. He was educated at Dulwich college in London before winning a scholarship to study philosophy at Christ Church, Oxford.

In 1983 he took up painting. Soon after, he moved to east London where he became interested in the urban dereliction left over from the Second World War. In 1984 he occupied several disused buildings and, together with a number of artists including South African painter, Beezy Bailey, he began to make site-specificinstallations using found material.

From the mid-1980s he joined various underground art collectives including the ARC group, a London-based collective of international artists, influenced by Kurt Schwitters, who specialized in building site-specific installation art. From 1987 to 1991 he worked together with the ARC group until it was finally disbanded in November 1991 in Budapest.