John Bowstead is an English artist, and contributor to the Pop Art

Pop art

Pop art is an art movement that emerged in the mid 1950s in Britain and in the late 1950s in the United States. Pop art challenged tradition by asserting that an artist's use of the mass-produced visual commodities of popular culture is contiguous with the perspective of fine art...

  movement of the 1960s.

In 1962, while studying at Coventry School of Art

Coventry University

Coventry University is a post-1992 university in Coventry, West Midlands, England. Under the terms of the Further and Higher Education Act of 1992, the institution's name was changed from Coventry Polytechnic to Coventry University...

 , Bowstead won the Reuters Prize for "Young Contemporaries", alongside Maurice Agis

Maurice Agis

Maurice Agis was a British sculptor and artist whose Dreamspace projects have drawn the involvement and work of various schools and art institutions all over Britain...

, David Hockney

David Hockney

David Hockney, CH, RA, is an English painter, draughtsman, printmaker, stage designer and photographer, who is based in Bridlington, Yorkshire and Kensington, London....

 and Peter Phillips

Peter Phillips (artist)

You also may be looking for Pete Rock.Peter Phillips is an English artist who is one of the pioneers of the Pop Art movement...

. This led to the exhibition "Four Young Artists" at the Institute of Contemporary Arts

Institute of Contemporary Arts

The Institute of Contemporary Arts is an artistic and cultural centre on The Mall in London, just off Trafalgar Square. It is located within Nash House, part of Carlton House Terrace, near the Duke of York Steps and Admiralty Arch...

. The following year he received an "Honourable Mention" in the John Moores Prize competition for his piece "Surf Citizen".

Bowstead studied at the Slade School of Fine Art

Slade School of Fine Art

The Slade School of Fine Art is a world-renownedart school in London, United Kingdom, and a department of University College London...

 from to . In 1963, with fellow Slade painters Terry Atkinson

Terry Atkinson

Terry Atkinson is an English artist.Atkinson was born in Thurnscoe, near Barnsley, Yorkshire. In 1967 he began to teach art at the Coventry School of Art while producing conceptual works, sometimes in collaboration with Michael Baldwin...

, Roger Jeffs, and Bernard Jennings, he formed the art group "Fine Artz Associates". The group exhibited its work, "The Kandilac Kustomised Asteroid Action Seat", in the 1964 "Young Contemporaries" exhibition.

John Bowstead worked on the Light/Sound Workshop at Hornsey College of Art (Media Experiments 1-4, 1968; [Project no. 118]). Worked also on Airplane Panels for the Milan Triennale installation, 1967-8 (Project no. 107), as featured in Archigram 8, 1968 (Project no. 100.8). His project on Informaison: Multi-Channel Audio-Visual Environmental System, with Roger Jeffs, featured in Archigram 8, while his All-Singing Multi-Media Spectacular, presented with friends, was advertised in Archigram 9, 1970 (Project no. 100.9)

Bowstead's work is referenced in "Too much: art and society in the Sixties 1960-75" (Robert Hewson 1986), "Burning the Box of Beautiful Things" (Alex Seago), and "Critical Kitaj: Essays on the Work of R.B. Kitaj" (James Aulich) .

In 2001, he became Head of Visual and Performing Arts at the Working Men's College

Working Men's College

The Working Men's College- WMC, being among the earliest adult education institutions established in the United Kingdom, is Europe's oldest extant centre for adult education and perhaps one of its smallest...

, and currently teaches on the College's Access to Art & Design course. Many Bowstead students have gone on to study at Goldsmiths, Camberwell

Camberwell College of Arts

Camberwell College of Arts is a constituent college of the University of the Arts London, and is widely regarded as one of the world's foremost art and design institutions. It is located in Camberwell, South London, England, with two sites situated at Peckham Road and Wilson Road...

, Chelsea

Chelsea College of Art and Design

Chelsea College of Art and Design, the erstwhile Chelsea School of Art, is a constituent college of the University of the Arts London, and is a leading British art and design institution with an international reputation...

, St Martins and the London College of Communication

London College of Communication

The London College of Communication is a constituent college of the University of the Arts London, located in Elephant and Castle. It has about 5,000 students on 60 courses in media and design courses preparing students for careers in the creative industries...

Bowstead is married with two children and lives in Newham

London Borough of Newham

The London Borough of Newham is a London borough formed from the towns of West Ham and East Ham, within East London.It is situated east of the City of London, and is north of the River Thames. According to 2006 estimates, Newham has one of the highest ethnic minority populations of all the...

, east London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

. He is a friend of the academic John Grahl

John Grahl

John Grahl is a British academic and professor.Grahl was brought-up in Burntisland, Fife, and was educated at Kirkcaldy High School between 1957 and 1964...

. His sister Jennifer married Allan Clarke

Allan Clarke (singer)

Allan Clarke is a retired British singer who was one of the founding members of The Hollies. He retired in 1999.-Career:...

 of The Hollies

The Hollies

The Hollies are an English pop and rock group, formed in Manchester in the early 1960s, though most of the band members are from throughout East Lancashire. Known for their distinctive vocal harmony style, they became one of the leading British groups of the 1960s and 1970s...

.