Born in Paisley, Scotland in 1963, Gallaccio lives and works in London. After studying at Kingston Polytechnic (1984-1985) and Goldsmiths College, University of London (1985-1988), she first came to public attention in the late 1980s with a group of young artists shown in the exhibition Freeze curated by Damien Hirst. Since that time she has had a number of solo presentations of her work both in Britain and abroad, notably at Lanarkshire House, Glasgow (1999), Sadler's Wells, London (1999), Kunsthalle Bern (2000) and Lehmann Maupin, New York (2001).

Gallaccio has been included in numerous group shows including most recently The Greenhouse Effect, Serpentine Gallery (2000), The Invisible Touch, The Kunstraum Innsbruck, Austria (2000) and the Istanbul Biennale (2001). She undertook a residency on the Art Pace International Artist's Programme, San Antonio, Texas in 1997, and was awarded a Sargent Fellowship for the British School in Rome in 1998. She was also artist-in-residence at the Kamazawa Art Academy, Japan in 1999, and has recently been awarded the 1871 Fellowship - shared between The Rothermere Institute at Oxford University and the San Francisco Art Institute.