John Bourne
Encyclopedia
John Bourne is a British
artist and painter, living and working in Wales
, and a member of the Stuckists
art movement. He founded the Wrexham Stuckists group in 2001 and has been exhibited in the group's shows since then, including The Stuckists Punk Victorian
. He has also taken part in Stuckist demonstrations
against the Turner Prize
. The subject matter for his paintings, which are done in a simplified style, comes from his memories.
, 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.
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
.
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." He has been a full-time artist ever since then. In 1990, he won first prize in the Mostyn Open 1 competition. In 1991, he staged a solo show at Theatr Clwyd, Mold
. 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.
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."
He immediately founded the Wrexham group of the Stuckists
art movement, the first group in Wales, along with Elfyn Jones, Neil Robertson and Geraint Dodd,. 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. In 2003, founded the Welsh Stuckism International Centre at his home. From 2003, he took part in Stuckist demonstrations
against the Turner Prize
at Tate Britain
.
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
. Bourne was a co-curator, doing work at the museum to arrange the show. 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."
Although Tate
gallery director, Sir Nicholas Serota was dubbed the "least likely visitor" to the show, 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
, he did visit, describing the work as "lively", 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". Six of Bourne's paintings were amongst the rejected work.
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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. 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—an event which Thomson considers to have precipitated Serota's angry defence of the purchase at the prize ceremony in the evening. 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. 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."
Bourne curated a Wrexham Stuckists show at the Oswestry
Heritage Centre, Shropshire
, in 2005. 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
.
He lives with his wife in a red-brick terrace in rural Wales, and has two daughters living in London.
Bourne is mostly self-taught. 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. He said:
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. While doing the painting he adjusted the angles in it obsessively "to get it just right".
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
artist and painter, living and working in Wales
Wales
Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...
, and a member of the Stuckists
Stuckism
Stuckism is an international art movement founded in 1999 by Billy Childish and Charles Thomson to promote figurative painting in opposition to conceptual art...
art movement. He founded the Wrexham Stuckists group in 2001 and has been exhibited in the group's shows since then, including The Stuckists Punk Victorian
The Stuckists Punk Victorian
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....
. He has also taken part in Stuckist demonstrations
Stuckist demonstrations
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...
against the Turner Prize
Turner Prize
The Turner Prize, named after the painter J. M. W. Turner, is an annual prize presented to a British visual artist under the age of 50. Awarding the prize is organised by the Tate gallery and staged at Tate Britain. Since its beginnings in 1984 it has become the United Kingdom's most publicised...
. The subject matter for his paintings, which are done in a simplified style, comes from his memories.
Life and career
John Bourne was born in StaffordshireStaffordshire
Staffordshire is a landlocked county in the West Midlands region of England. For Eurostat purposes, the county is a NUTS 3 region and is one of four counties or unitary districts that comprise the "Shropshire and Staffordshire" NUTS 2 region. Part of the National Forest lies within its borders...
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
, and spent much of his childhood in Northern Ireland; his father was a Methodist minister in the Yorkshire Dales
Yorkshire Dales
The Yorkshire Dales is the name given to an upland area in Northern England.The area lies within the historic county boundaries of Yorkshire, though it spans the ceremonial counties of North Yorkshire, West Yorkshire and Cumbria...
and passionate about Van Gogh
Vincent van Gogh
Vincent Willem van Gogh , and used Brabant dialect in his writing; it is therefore likely that he himself pronounced his name with a Brabant accent: , with a voiced V and palatalized G and gh. In France, where much of his work was produced, it is...
: Bourne says that his earliest memory, aged three, was of his father copying a Van Gogh painting.
Copenhagen
Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...
.
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." He has been a full-time artist ever since then. In 1990, he won first prize in the Mostyn Open 1 competition. In 1991, he staged a solo show at Theatr Clwyd, Mold
Mold
Molds are fungi that grow in the form of multicellular filaments called hyphae. Molds are not considered to be microbes but microscopic fungi that grow as single cells called yeasts...
. He has said that the increasing dominance of conceptual art
Conceptual art
Conceptual art is art in which the concept or idea involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns. Many of the works, sometimes called installations, of the artist Sol LeWitt may be constructed by anyone simply by following a set of written instructions...
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.
He recalled an article about the Stuckists
Stuckism
Stuckism is an international art movement founded in 1999 by Billy Childish and Charles Thomson to promote figurative painting in opposition to conceptual art...
painting group which had appeared in The Sunday Times
The Sunday Times
The Sunday Times is a British Sunday newspaper.The Sunday Times may also refer to:*The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times *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."
Stuckism
Stuckism is an international art movement founded in 1999 by Billy Childish and Charles Thomson to promote figurative painting in opposition to conceptual art...
art movement, the first group in Wales, along with Elfyn Jones, Neil Robertson and Geraint Dodd,. In 2002, he was included in The First Stuckist International and subsequent shows at the Stuckism International Gallery
Stuckism International Gallery
The Stuckism International Gallery was the gallery of the Stuckist art movement. It was open 2002 to 2005 in Shoreditch, and run by Charles Thomson, the co-founder of Stuckism...
in London, as well as Stuck in Wednesbury at the Wednesbury
Wednesbury
Wednesbury is a market town in England's Black Country, part of the Sandwell metropolitan borough in West Midlands, near the source of the River Tame. Similarly to the word Wednesday, it is pronounced .-Pre-Medieval and Medieval times:...
Museum and Art Gallery. In 2003, founded the Welsh Stuckism International Centre at his home. From 2003, he took part in Stuckist demonstrations
Stuckist demonstrations
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...
against the Turner Prize
Turner Prize
The Turner Prize, named after the painter J. M. W. Turner, is an annual prize presented to a British visual artist under the age of 50. Awarding the prize is organised by the Tate gallery and staged at Tate Britain. Since its beginnings in 1984 it has become the United Kingdom's most publicised...
at Tate Britain
Tate Britain
Tate Britain is an art gallery situated on Millbank in London, and part of the Tate gallery network in Britain, with Tate Modern, Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives. It is the oldest gallery in the network, opening in 1897. It houses a substantial collection of the works of J. M. W. Turner.-History:It...
.
In 2004, he was one of the fourteen "founder and featured" artists in The Stuckists Punk Victorian
The Stuckists Punk Victorian
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....
held at the Walker Art Gallery
Walker Art Gallery
The Walker Art Gallery is an art gallery in Liverpool, which houses one of the largest art collections in England, outside of London. It is part of the National Museums Liverpool group, and is promoted as "the National Gallery of the North" because it is not a local or regional gallery but is part...
for the Liverpool Biennial
Liverpool Biennial
Liverpool Biennial is a British international festival of contemporary art held in Liverpool. The festival comprises the International Exhibition, the John Moores Painting Prize, the Bloomberg New Contemporaries Exhibition and the Independents Biennial....
. Bourne was a co-curator, doing work at the museum to arrange the show. Philip Key of the Liverpool Daily Post
Liverpool Daily Post
The Liverpool Daily Post is a newspaper published by Trinity Mirror in Liverpool, Merseyside, England. It is published Monday to Friday and is published in Merseyside, Cheshire, and North Wales editions, and is a morning paper...
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."
Tate
-Places:*Tate, Georgia, a town in the United States*Tate County, Mississippi, a county in the United States*Táté, the Hungarian name for Totoi village, Sântimbru Commune, Alba County, Romania*Tate, Filipino word for States...
gallery director, Sir Nicholas Serota was dubbed the "least likely visitor" to the show, which included a wall of work satirising the Tate and Serota himself, such as Stuckist co-founder Charles Thomson's
Charles Thomson (artist)
Charles Thomson is an English artist, painter, 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...
painting, Sir Nicholas Serota Makes an Acquisitions Decision
Sir Nicholas Serota Makes an Acquisitions Decision
Sir Nicholas Serota Makes an Acquisitions Decision is one of the best known paintings to come out of the Stuckism art movement, and a likely "signature piece" for the movement, standing for its opposition to conceptual art...
, he did visit, describing the work as "lively", 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". Six of Bourne's paintings were amongst the rejected work.
Chris Ofili
Chris Ofili is a Turner Prize winning British painter best known for artworks referencing aspects of his Nigerian heritage, particularly his incorporation of elephant dung. He was one of the Young British Artists, and is now based in Trinidad.-Early life:Ofilli was born in Manchester. He had a...
's work, The Upper Room. This included a demonstration about the purchase outside the Turner Prize
Turner Prize
The Turner Prize, named after the painter J. M. W. Turner, is an annual prize presented to a British visual artist under the age of 50. Awarding the prize is organised by the Tate gallery and staged at Tate Britain. Since its beginnings in 1984 it has become the United Kingdom's most publicised...
at Tate Britain
Tate Britain
Tate Britain is an art gallery situated on Millbank in London, and part of the Tate gallery network in Britain, with Tate Modern, Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives. It is the oldest gallery in the network, opening in 1897. It houses a substantial collection of the works of J. M. W. Turner.-History:It...
in December 2005, where Bourne handed a protest leaflet to Serota—an event which Thomson considers to have precipitated Serota's angry defence of the purchase at the prize ceremony in the evening. In 2006 the Charity Commission
Charity Commission
The Charity Commission for England and Wales is the non-ministerial government department that regulates registered charities in England and Wales....
censured the Tate and ruled that it had broken the law in making the purchase and similar trustee purchases during the previous 50 years. The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph is a daily morning broadsheet newspaper distributed throughout the United Kingdom and internationally. The newspaper was founded by Arthur B...
called the verdict "one of the most serious indictments of the running of one of the nation's major cultural institutions in living memory."
Bourne curated a Wrexham Stuckists show at the Oswestry
Oswestry
Oswestry is a town and civil parish in Shropshire, England, close to the Welsh border. It is at the junction of the A5, A483, and A495 roads....
Heritage Centre, Shropshire
Shropshire
Shropshire is a county in the West Midlands region of England. For Eurostat purposes, the county is a NUTS 3 region and is one of four counties or unitary districts that comprise the "Shropshire and Staffordshire" NUTS 2 region. It borders Wales to the west...
, in 2005. He was one of the artists in the Triumph of Stuckism, a Stuckist painting exhibition which comprised part of Liverpool Biennial
Liverpool Biennial
Liverpool Biennial is a British international festival of contemporary art held in Liverpool. The festival comprises the International Exhibition, the John Moores Painting Prize, the Bloomberg New Contemporaries Exhibition and the Independents Biennial....
's 2006 programme at Liverpool John Moores University
Liverpool John Moores University
Liverpool John Moores University is a British 'modern' university located in the city of Liverpool, England. The university is named after John Moores and was previously called Liverpool Mechanics' School of Arts and later Liverpool Polytechnic before gaining university status in 1992, thus...
.
He lives with his wife in a red-brick terrace in rural Wales, and has two daughters living in London.
Art
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
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
Lancaster bomber
Avro Lancaster
The Avro Lancaster is a British four-engined Second World War heavy bomber made initially by Avro for the Royal Air Force . It first saw active service in 1942, and together with the Handley Page Halifax it was one of the main heavy bombers of the RAF, the RCAF, and squadrons from other...
—coming towards him over the treetops one day. While doing the painting he adjusted the angles in it obsessively "to get it just right".