Tim Etchells (1962) is an artist and a writer based in the UK. He has worked in a wide variety of contexts, notably as the leader of the world renowned performance group Forced Entertainment and in collaboration with a range of visual artists, choreographers, and photographers including Meg Stuart, Elmgreen & Dragset, Hugo Glendinning, Vlatka Horvat and many others. His work ranges from performance to video, photography, text projects, installation and fiction.

In recent years Etchells has exhibited widely in the context of visual arts, with solo shows at Gasworks and Sketch (London) and Künstlerhaus Bremen. His work has appeared in the biennales Manifesta 7 (2008) in Rovereto, Italy, Art Sheffield 2008 and Goteborg Bienale (2009) and will be part of October Salon in Belgrade (2010) as well as (with Vlatka Horvat) in the Aichi Trienale, Nagoya, Japan (2010). Selected groups shows include The Moon Is An Arrant Thief, David Roberts Art Foundation, London (2010), Play Admont, Regional 10, Austria (2010), In Full Bloom at Galleria Raffaella Cortesa in Milan (2010), Mein Essen Heidelberger Kunstverein (2010), Netherlands Media Art Institute (Amsterdam), MUHKA (Antwerp), Sparwasser HQ (Berlin), MACBA (Barcelona), The Centre for Book Arts, Canada and Exit Art (all New York) and Kunsthaus Graz. He co-curated and has new commissioned work in the Performing Sculpture section of the DLA Piper Series: This is Sculpture, at Tate Liverpool (2009). Also forthcoming is the opening of two major site specific public sculpture works for Weston-Super-Mare in the UK, Autumn 2010.

Forced Entertainment is a performance group founded in 1984 and based in Sheffield, . For the group Etchells has directed, devised, and occasionally performed in, dozens of critically acclaimed performance works that have been shown at major festivals and theatres around the world. Forced Entertainment has had a huge impact on the development of a uniquely British style of avant-garde performance and their work is now included as part of the theatrical canon to students studying contemporary performance. Taking a cue from their provocative name, Forced Entertainment's work is often concerned with the mechanics of the live event - disrupting conventions and expectations associated with attending live performance.

Etchells has developed a unique voice in writing for and about performance - his monograph Certain Fragments (Forced Entertainment and Contemporary Performance), (Routledge 1999) is widely acclaimed. Etchells has also published fiction; Endland Stories (Pulp Books 1998) and The Dream Dictionary (for the Modern Dreamer) (Duck Editions, 2000) were followed by his first novel - The Broken World (Heinemann, 2008) - in the form of a guide to an imaginary computer game.

Etchells was a Senior Research Fellow at The Nottingham Trent University (2000 – 2001), took part in the IASPIS Studio Programme, Stockholm (2003), and was a Creative Fellow in the Department of Theatre Studies at Lancaster University, 2005 - 2008. In 2007 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by Dartington College of Arts, in recognition of his writing for and about contemporary performance. He is currently Legacy: Thinker in Residence (2009-2010) at Tate Research and LADA in London.