Matt Stokes was born in Penzance, Cornwall, and has lived, studied and worked in the Northeast of England since 1993. In 2006, he was the winner of the Beck’s Futures Prize, and was shortlisted for the Northern Art Prize 2009.

Stokes staged a major solo exhibition The Gainsborough Packet, &c. at 176, London in 2009, including work shown simultaneously at Baltic centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead.

Other recent solo exhibitions include these are the days, Arthouse, Texas (2009), [un]promised Land, attitudes espace d'arts contemporains, Geneva (2007) and Pills to Purge Melancholy, Collective Gallery, Edinburgh (2006). He has also shown extensively in group exhibitions such as See This Sound, Lentos Kunstmuseum, Linz (2009), Crossing, Centro per l’Arte Contemporanea Luigi Pecci, Prato (2008), The Weasel: Pop Music and Contemporary Art, South London Gallery, London (2007), Street: behind the cliché, Witte de With, Rotterdam (2006), and Our Surroundings, Dundee Contemporary Arts, Dundee (2005).

In autumn 2010 Stokes launched The Stratford Gaff: A Serio-Comick-Bombastick-Operatick Interlude a public commission for Art on the Underground, and in December 2010 he presented a significant solo show at the Kunsthalle Fridericianum in Kassel, Germany.

Stokes is represented by Lüttgenmeijer, Berlin, Workplace Gallery, Gateshead and ZieherSmith, New York.