Marc Quinn graduated from Cambridge University in 1985. His work concerns the body in transformation, and at times conflicted states. Prior to the early 1990's Quinn made a series of busts out of bread dough that he baked and then cast in bronze, exploiting the unpredictability of his raw material to create contoured portraits of historical figures such as Marie Antoinette.

In 1991, Quinn exhibited Self at Jay Jopling/Grob Gallery, London, a work which brought him widespread recognition. Over a five-month period Quinn had eight pints of blood extracted from his body (the average amount in the human body) which he then poured into a cast of his head, froze and placed in a Perspex cube attached to a refrigeration unit. Inspired by a cast of William Blake's face, Self is a meditation on mortality, tenuously held in frozen animation.

Quinn has shown widely in Britain, Europe and the United States. He was selected for the Sidney Biennial in 1992, and participated in the 'Thinking Print' show at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1996. In 1997 he exhibited at South London Gallery and at the kunstverein in Hanover, Germany.