John Bourne | |
---|---|
Born | 1943 (age 80–81) |
Nationality | British |
Education | Imperial College of Science and Technology |
Known for | Painting |
Notable work | Aeroplane, Tea at the Albert Dock |
Movement | Stuckism |
John Bourne (born 1943) is a British artist and painter, living and working in Wales, and a member of the Stuckists art movement. [1] He founded the Wrexham Stuckists group in 2001 [2] and has been exhibited in the group's shows since then, including The Stuckists Punk Victorian . [3] He has also taken part in Stuckist demonstrations against the Turner Prize. [4] The subject matter for his paintings, which are done in a simplified style, comes from his memories. [5]
John Bourne was born in Staffordshire, England, and spent much of his childhood in Northern Ireland; his father was a Methodist minister in the Yorkshire Dales and passionate about Van Gogh: Bourne says that his earliest memory, aged three, was of his father copying a Van Gogh painting. [6]
1964–68, Bourne gained a BSc in Physics at the University College of North Wales, followed 1968–71 by an MPhil (Research on Solid State Theory) at the Imperial College of Science and Technology and H. C. Ørsted Institute, Copenhagen. [1]
He worked as a computer programmer, maths teacher and physics lecturer, until 1986, when "I did a Gauguin but not in the South Seas. I walked out. It was tremendous." [1] He has been a full-time artist ever since then. In 1990, he won first prize in the Mostyn Open 1 competition. [1] In 1991, he staged a solo show at Theatr Clwyd, Mold. [5] He has said that the increasing dominance of conceptual art proved obstructive to his own progress as a painter, and this came to a head in November 2001, when his work was rejected from a local exhibition: he began to despair of getting exposure. [7]
He recalled an article about the Stuckists painting group which had appeared in The Sunday Times and responded to them: "I liked the Stuckist Manifesto with its emphasis on painting and artistic integrity. It contained many new ideas and seemed to sum up my disquiet concerning the contemporary art world. Here was a radical, modern movement which championed painting. Some of the artists appeared a little rough and their work at times shocking, but this seemed an advantage if anything." [7]
He immediately founded the Wrexham group of the Stuckists art movement, the first group in Wales, [2] along with Elfyn Jones, Neil Robertson and Geraint Dodd. [7] In 2002, he was included in The First Stuckist International and subsequent shows at the Stuckism International Gallery in London, as well as Stuck in Wednesbury at the Wednesbury Museum and Art Gallery. [3] In 2003, founded the Welsh Stuckism International Centre at his home. [8] From 2003, he took part in Stuckist demonstrations against the Turner Prize at Tate Britain. [4]
In 2004, he was one of the fourteen "founder and featured" artists in The Stuckists Punk Victorian held at the Walker Art Gallery for the Liverpool Biennial. [9] Bourne was a co-curator, [3] doing work at the museum to arrange the show. [10] Philip Key of the Liverpool Daily Post commented on the exhibition: "And they are not all lacking artistic skills. John Bourne of the Wrexham Stuckists—there are now groups all over the world—paints some well thought-out subdued portraits including the pleasing foursome in Tea at the Albert Dock." [11]
Although Tate gallery director, Sir Nicholas Serota was dubbed the "least likely visitor" to the show, [12] which included a wall of work satirising the Tate and Serota himself, such as Stuckist co-founder Charles Thomson's painting, Sir Nicholas Serota Makes an Acquisitions Decision , [13] he did visit, describing the work as "lively", [14] and meeting Bourne and other artists (see photo). In 2005, Serota rejected the Stuckists' offer of a donation of 160 paintings from the Walker show, because "We do not feel that the work is of sufficient quality in terms of accomplishment, innovation or originality of thought to warrant preservation in perpetuity in the national collection". [15] Six of Bourne's paintings were amongst the rejected work. [16]
A direct consequence of the rejection was a Stuckist media campaign led by Thomson over the Tate's purchase of its trustee Chris Ofili's work, The Upper Room. [17] This included a demonstration about the purchase outside the Turner Prize at Tate Britain in December 2005, where Bourne handed a protest leaflet to Serota [18] —an event which Thomson considers to have precipitated Serota's angry defence of the purchase at the prize ceremony in the evening. [18] [19] In 2006 the Charity Commission censured the Tate and ruled that it had broken the law in making the purchase and similar trustee purchases during the previous 50 years. [20] The Daily Telegraph called the verdict "one of the most serious indictments of the running of one of the nation's major cultural institutions in living memory." [21]
Bourne curated a Wrexham Stuckists show at the Oswestry Heritage Centre, Shropshire, in 2005. [3] He was one of the artists in the Triumph of Stuckism, a Stuckist painting exhibition which comprised part of Liverpool Biennial's 2006 programme at Liverpool John Moores University. [3]
He lives with his wife in a red-brick terrace in rural Wales, and has two daughters living in London. [6]
Bourne is mostly self-taught. [5] He works in acrylic, oil and ink to produce images, where visual detail is simplified in order to depict memories of both recent life and his Northern Ireland childhood. [5] He said:
I start with memories. You only remember what’s relevant. I make loads of sketches from imagination. I pin the sketches on the wall. I often look at a sketch for months or even years before I see a way to make it into a painting. It usually goes well at first but then I run into problems of composition. I have to make many changes. Sometimes it’s years later that I find a way to finish it. I’m trying to reveal something of a world beyond time and space. [1]
He describes the genesis of his painting Aeroplane as a fear of low-flying aircraft and the experience of seeing an aeroplane—which looked like a World War II Lancaster bomber—coming towards him over the treetops one day. [1] While doing the painting he adjusted the angles in it obsessively "to get it just right". [1]
Stuckism is an international art movement founded in 1999 by Billy Childish and Charles Thomson to promote figurative painting as opposed to conceptual art. By May 2017, the initial group of 13 British artists had expanded to 236 groups in 52 countries.
Remodernism is an artistic and philosophical movement aimed at reviving aspects of modernism, particularly in its early form, in a manner that both follows after and contrasts against postmodernism. The movement was initiated in 2000 by stuckists Billy Childish and Charles Thomson, with a manifesto, Remodernism in an attempt to introduce a period of new "spirituality" into art, culture and society to replace postmodernism, which they said was cynical and spiritually bankrupt. In 2002, a remodernism art show in Albuquerque was accompanied by an essay from University of California, Berkeley art professor, Kevin Radley. Adherents of remodernism advocate it as a forward and radical, not reactionary, impetus.
Sir Nicholas Andrew Serota is a British art historian and curator.
Charles Thomson is an English artist, poet and photographer. In the early 1980s he was a member of The Medway Poets. In 1999 he named and co-founded the Stuckists art movement with Billy Childish. He has curated Stuckist shows, organised demonstrations against the Turner Prize, run an art gallery, stood for parliament and reported Charles Saatchi to the OFT. He is frequently quoted in the media as an opponent of conceptual art. He was briefly married to artist Stella Vine.
Philip Absolon is a British artist and a founder member of the Stuckists art group, exhibiting in the group shows, including The Stuckists Punk Victorian at the Walker Art Gallery in 2004, and taking part in Stuckist demonstrations against the Turner Prize. He has had long-term unemployment problems, depicted in his work with imagery of skeletons; his other main subject is cats, which he studies and depicts in motion.
Joe Machine is an English artist, poet and writer. He is a founding member of the Stuckists art group.
Paul Arthur Harvey is a British musician and Stuckist artist, whose work was used to promote the Stuckists' 2004 show at the Liverpool Biennial. His paintings draw on pop art and the work of Alphonse Mucha, and often depict celebrities, including Madonna.
Jesse Beau Richards is a painter, filmmaker and photographer from New Haven, Connecticut and was affiliated with the international movement Stuckism. He has been described as "one of the most provocative names in American underground culture," and "the father of remodernist cinema."
The Stuckists Punk Victorian was the first national gallery exhibition of Stuckist art. It was held at the Walker Art Gallery and Lady Lever Art Gallery in Liverpool from 18 September 2004 to 20 February 2005 and was part of the 2004 Liverpool Biennial.
Ella Guru is an American painter and musician living in Hastings, East Sussex, England. She was a member of Mambo Taxi and the Voodoo Queens. In 1999, she became one of the founding members of the Stuckist art movement.
Rachel Jordan is a British artist and has been a frequent guest exhibitor with the Stuckists. For Stuckist shows she created satirical figurative paintings; however, her main body of work is abstract paintings and drawings, alluding to cellular forms.
Elsa Dax is a French painter and a member of the Stuckists art movement. Major themes in her work are myth, legend and fairytale.
The Upper Room is an installation of 13 paintings of rhesus macaque monkeys by English artist Chris Ofili in a specially-designed room. It was bought by the Tate gallery in 2005 from the Victoria Miro Gallery and was the cause of a media furore after a campaign initiated by the Stuckist art group as Ofili was on the board of Tate trustees at the time of the purchase. In 2006 the Charity Commission censured the Tate for the purchase, but did not revoke it.
Stuckism is an art movement that began in London, England, in 1999. In 2000, Melbourne artist Regan Tamanui started the first international branch of the movement. As of 2010, there are seven Australian Stuckist groups, who have held shows—sometimes concurrently with UK activities—received coverage in the Australian press and on TV, and also been represented in UK shows. The Stuckists take a strong pro-painting and anti-conceptual art stance, and were co-founded by Charles Thomson and Billy Childish.
Stuckist demonstrations since 2000 have been a key part of the Stuckist art group's activities and have succeeded in giving them a high-profile both in Britain and abroad. Their primary agenda is the promotion of figurative painting and opposition to conceptual art.
Regan Tamanui is an artist based in Melbourne, Australia. In October 2000, he founded the Melbourne Stuckists, the fourth Stuckist of the original Stuckist groups and the first outside the United Kingdom. He has also painted prolifically as a street artist under the tag name HA-HA.
Go West is the title of the first exhibition by Stuckist artists in a commercial London West End gallery. It was staged in Spectrum London gallery in October 2006. The show attracted media interest for its location, for the use of a painting satirising Sir Nicholas Serota, Director of the Tate gallery, and for two paintings of a stripper by Charles Thomson based on his former wife, artist Stella Vine.
Sir Nicholas Serota Makes an Acquisitions Decision is one of the paintings that was made as a part of the Stuckism art movement, and is recognized as a "signature piece" for the movement. It was painted in 2000 by the Stuckism co-founder Charles Thomson, and has been exhibited in a number of shows since, as well as being featured on placards during Stuckist demonstrations against the Turner Prize.
The Stuckism International Gallery was the gallery of the Stuckist art movement. It was open from 2002 to 2005 in Shoreditch, and was run by Charles Thomson, the co-founder of Stuckism. It was launched by a procession carrying a coffin marked "The death of conceptual art" to the neighbouring White Cube gallery.