Jonathan Ellery

Last updated

Jonathan Ellery in Heavy Metal Cock Ring.jpg

Jonathan Ellery (born 1964) is an English artist and founder of British design studio Browns.

Contents

Ellery was born in Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire and raised in Cornwall. His father was an artist and ceramicist who set up Tremaen pottery in Newlyn and Penzance.

Ellery studied Graphic Design at Bournemouth and on graduation moved to London to begin his career as a Graphic Designer. In 1998, following success and Creative Directorship at various companies, Ellery co-founded the design studio Browns. [1] In 2002 Ellery took over ownership of Browns. It is now run creatively by himself and Aaron Easterbrook, combining cultural and commercial commissions. Clients include Channel 4, [2] Hiscox, [3] Bafta and Dries van Noten. [4] In 2008 Ellery launched Browns Editions, the publishing arm of Browns, producing limited edition, hand numbered titles. The Browns Editions catalogue covers photography, conceptual and fine art books.

Ellery’s first notable shift towards balancing design and his work as a solo artist occurred in 2005, with "136 Points of Reference". [5] This took the form of an exhibition held at the Andrew Roth Gallery in New York, [6] and a self-published art title, the first in what is now a series of five. This coupling of exhibition and book continued with "Unrest", [7] a show featuring large-scale brass works and a sound and video piece projecting the numbers 1–87, corresponding to the book "87", [8] and "Constance", [9] a "live performance" [10] featuring a drummer and a girl undressing, held at The Wapping Project in London. These pieces highlight his attraction to the medium of book art, which plays a central role throughout his art practice.

In 2008 Ellery was nominated for the "Brit Insurance Designs of the Year" [11] and exhibited at the Design Museum in London. [12]

In 2009 Ellery held his fourth solo entitled "Ellery’s Theory of Neo-conservative Creationism". [13] It consisted of large scale, machined, solid brass suspended sculptures, sound and moving image. To commemorate the show, a black and white catalogue was also published highlighting artworks that had been machined by Ellery into brass.

The Hen House in 2013 is the most recent body of work by Jonathan Ellery. The notion of sequence and unfolding narrative is at the core of his art, enforcing a distinctive Ellery language that offers each work as one part of a continuous and burgeoning series, strengthened by its succession. The deceptive simplicity of the work is informed by Ellery’s awareness of the absurd, a delight in constructing certain orders and exploring the tensions between them. The Hen House includes works in cast iron, aluminium, brass as well as photography. It is accompanied by a limited edition catalogue published by Browns Editions.

Jonathan Ellery lives above his studio in Bermondsey, South London.

Solo exhibitions

Publications

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Graphic design</span> Interdisciplinary branch of design and of the fine arts

Graphic design is a profession, academic discipline and applied art whose activity consists in projecting visual communications intended to transmit specific messages to social groups, with specific objectives. Graphic design is an interdisciplinary branch of design and of the fine arts. Its practice involves creativity, innovation and lateral thinking using manual or digital tools, where it is usual to use text and graphics to communicate visually.

Postmodernism is an intellectual stance or mode of discourse characterized by suspicion about the use of reason and logic; skepticism toward what it considers the "grand narratives" of modernism; rejection of the certainty of knowledge and the stability of meaning; and sensitivity to the role of ideology in maintaining political power. Claims to objectivity are dismissed as naïve realism, with attention drawn to the conditional nature of knowledge. The postmodern outlook is characterized by self-referentiality, epistemological relativism, moral relativism, pluralism, irony, irreverence, and eclecticism; it rejects the "universal validity" of binary oppositions, stable identity, hierarchy, and categorization.

<i>De Stijl</i> Dutch art movement founded 1917

De Stijl, also known as Neoplasticism, was a Dutch art movement founded in 1917 in Leiden. De Stijl consisted of artists and architects. In a more narrow sense, the term De Stijl is used to refer to a body of work from 1917 to 1931 founded in the Netherlands. Proponents of De Stijl advocated pure abstraction and universality by a reduction to the essentials of form and colour; they simplified visual compositions to vertical and horizontal, using only black, white and primary colors.

Richard Arthur Wollheim was a British philosopher noted for original work on mind and emotions, especially as related to the visual arts, specifically, painting. Wollheim served as the president of the British Society of Aesthetics from 1992 onwards until his death in 2003.

Vaughan Oliver was a British graphic designer based in Epsom, Surrey. Oliver was best known for his work with graphic design studios 23 Envelope and v23. Both studios maintained a close relationship with record label 4AD between 1982 and 1998 and gave distinct visual identities for the 4AD releases by many bands, including Mojave 3, Lush, Cocteau Twins, The Breeders, This Mortal Coil, Pale Saints, Pixies, and Throwing Muses. Oliver also designed record sleeves for such artists as David Sylvian, The Golden Palominos, and Bush.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Monumental brass</span> Type of church memorial

A monumental brass is a type of engraved sepulchral memorial once found through Western Europe, which in the 13th century began to partially take the place of three-dimensional monuments and effigies carved in stone or wood. Made of hard latten or sheet brass, let into the pavement, and thus forming no obstruction in the space required for the services of the church, they speedily came into general use, and continued to be a favourite style of sepulchral memorial for three centuries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Neo-futurism</span> Architectural and art movement and style

Neo-futurism is a late-20th to early-21st-century movement in the arts, design, and architecture.

This Is Tomorrow was an art exhibition in August 1956 at the Whitechapel Art Gallery on Whitechapel High Street in London's East End, UK, facilitated by curator Bryan Robertson. The core of the exhibition was the ICA Independent Group.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">American Institute of Graphic Arts</span> Professional organization for design

The American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) is a professional organization for design. Its members practice all forms of communication design, including graphic design, typography, interaction design, user experience, branding and identity. The organization's aim is to be the standard bearer for professional ethics and practices for the design profession. There are currently over 25,000 members and 72 chapters, and more than 200 student groups around the United States. In 2005, AIGA changed its name to “AIGA, the professional association for design,” dropping the "American Institute of Graphic Arts" to welcome all design disciplines. AIGA aims to further design disciplines as professions, as well as cultural assets. As a whole, AIGA offers opportunities in exchange for creative new ideas, scholarly research, critical analysis, and education advancement.

Woodrow Phoenix is a British comics artist, writer, editorial illustrator, graphic designer, font designer and author of children's books.

Helen McCarthy is the British author of such anime reference books as 500 Manga Heroes and Villains, Anime!, The Anime Movie Guide and Hayao Miyazaki: Master of Japanese Animation. She is the co-author of The Erotic Anime Movie Guide and the exhaustive The Anime Encyclopedia with Jonathan Clements. She also designs needlework and textile art.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jonathan Barnbrook</span> English graphic designer

Jonathan Barnbrook is a British graphic designer, film maker and typographer. He trained at Saint Martin's School of Art and at the Royal College of Art, both in London.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anton Stankowski</span> German painter

Anton Stankowski was a German graphic designer, photographer and painter. He developed an original Theory of Design and pioneered Constructive Graphic Art. Typical Stankowski designs attempt to illustrate processes or behaviours rather than objects. Such experiments resulted in the use of fractal-like structures long before their popularisation by Benoît Mandelbrot in 1975.

M/M (Paris) is an art and design partnership consisting of Mathias Augustyniak and Michael Amzalag, established in Paris in 1992.

Richard Milazzo is a critic, curator, publisher, independent scholar and poet from New York City. In the 1970s, he was the editor and co-publisher of Out of London Press. He is the co-founding publisher and editor of Edgewise Press. In the 1980s, under the rubric of Collins & Milazzo, he co-curated numerous Collins & Milazzo Exhibitions and co-wrote with Tricia Collins essays on art and art theory.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mira Schor</span>

Mira Schor is an American artist, writer, editor, and educator, known for her contributions to critical discourse on the status of painting in contemporary art and culture as well as to feminist art history and criticism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ingo Maurer</span> German industrial designer (1932–2019)

Ingo Maurer was a German industrial designer who specialised in the design of lamps and light installations. He was nicknamed "poet of light".

The University of Brighton Design Archives centres on British and global design organisations of the twentieth century. It is located within the University of Brighton Grand Parade campus in the heart of Brighton and is an international research resource. It has many archival collections that were generated by design institutions and individual designers

<i>Big 4</i> (sculpture) Sculpture of Channel 4 logo in London HQ

The Big 4 is a sculpture made of steel bars located outside the headquarters of the Channel Four Television Corporation in London. It is designed to represent the logo of Channel 4 while providing a basis for a number of art installations. As of November 2012 seven installations have been made on the statue's steel framework, including those to coincide with the 2012 Summer Paralympics, covered with both newsprint and umbrellas, and a design to simulate the statue breathing. A further dressing to celebrate the devolution of Channel 4 from London to a series of regionally-based offices, alongside the Horseferry Road HQ has recently been approved and will be erected later in 2019.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alan Kitching (typographic artist)</span>

Alan Kitching RDI AGI Hon FRCA is a practitioner of letterpress typographic design and printmaking. Kitching exhibits and lectures across the globe, and is known for his expressive use of wood and metal letterforms in commissions and limited-edition prints.

References

  1. idPure magazine, No.17, 2008, Editor in Chief Thierry Hausermann.
  2. "Annual Design Review, Graphic Design Distinction". i-D Magazine online. 19 February 2008. Archived from the original on 4 February 2011.
  3. 100 Best Annual Reports 2010, Graphis.
  4. Evamy, Michael (2009). Graphics Explained. Rotovision. p. 8, 196. Rockport Publishers. ISBN   978-1-59253-542-2
  5. "136 Points of Reference" Browns Editions.
  6. Creative Review magazine, March 2007, Edited by Patrick Burgoyne.
  7. Burgoyne, Patrick (23 March 2007). "Edited Highlights – Unrest". Creative Review (UK).
  8. "87" Browns Editions.
  9. "Constance" Jonathan Ellery.
  10. "Constance Live Performance"
  11. Burgoyne, Patrick (14 January 2008). "Design Museum's Designs of the Year Shortlist Revealed" Archived 19 January 2011 at the Wayback Machine . Creative Review. (UK).
  12. Brit Insurance Designs of the Year, Design Museum, catalogue. Edited and Coordinated by Margaret Cubbage.
  13. Lucas, Gavin (17 November 2009). "Ellery’s Theory of Neo-conservative Creationism". Creative Review. (UK).