Draft:Ilona Gaynor

Ilona Gaynor (born 1986) is a British designer, artist and writer. Gaynor’s work focuses on critical themes addressing legal language, corporate operations, labor, contemporary economic complexities and their narrative, semiotic or cinematic constructions.

Biography
Ilona Gaynor received her BA(Hons) in Moving Image Design from Ravensbourne College of Design and Communication in 2007 and her MA(RCA) in Design Interactions; under professors Dunne & Raby from the Royal College of Art in 2011. She is currently a visiting professor of Industrial Design at the Rhode Island School of Design, and was previously an Associate Professor of Designed Objects at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago 2016-2022. She also taught speculative studies at the Architectural Association in London.

Gaynor was a curator for the 10th edition of the Biennale Internationale Design Saint-Étienne under the theme of shifting work paradigms in 2017, and was awarded the Sir Ridley Scott residency prize for experimental narrative by RSA films in 2011. She was also a Designer in Residence at the Design Museum in London, 2014.

She has contributed to a number of written publications: Disegno Journal, Dirty Furniture Perspecta: Yale Architecture, Architectural Design (AD) , Redactions Series: Urbanomic Press among others, and published a short Science Fiction story in MIT's Twelve Tomorrows edited by American science fiction author Bruce Sterling.

Notable Exhibits
InSomnolence, Galerie de l’UQAM, Montreal, CA, 2024

Dark Oceans, Law Warschaw Gallery, Minneapolis, US 2018

Regimes of Prediction, Galerie Weisser Elefant Berlin, DE, 2018

Futureproof, Fitzgerald Gallery, Pennsylvania, US, 2018

The Ascent, Biennale Internationale Design Saint-Etienne,  FR 2017

Disruption, The Design Museum, London, 2014

Prehistory of the Image, Artefact Festival, STUK, Leuven, Belgium, 2014

Paper Moon, V2 Institute for the Unstable Media, Rotterdam, NL