Fearful Symmetry – JY at 70

*  FEARFUL SYMMETRY   JOHN YEADON AT 70  

This is the third selective retrospective exhibition of work in celebration of Yeadon’s 70th birthday.

 

 

 JY says of this show: “Following the theme of these two previous exhibitions I compare 1980s work with my recent return to painting. Previous to this I had over a decade of digital work and even with these three venues it was felt that there was not enough space to do justice to a comprehensive retrospective. So the digital work and pre-1980s work has been left out.

 However, I feel that the 1980s painting is now more relevant to my current practice. I have playfully referred to this ‘looking back’ as auto-plagiarism!

 This exhibition at the Lanchester Research Gallery, Coventry University, incorporates the Blind Biff series and the paintings of ventriloquist dummies. I began work on my Blind Bifford Jelly series during the 80s with the first exhibition, Unbelievable Stories, at the Lanchester Gallery in 1988. This series was later to be exhibited at the Ikon in Birmingham, Centre for Contemporary Art in Glasgow, the Royal Festival Hall and Vilma Gold in London as the Travails of Blind Bifford Jelly. Amongst the source for establishing the character of Blind Biff, I drew on my Mother’s ventriloquist dummy Tommy. It was these ventriloquist dolls of my Grandmother and Mother’s that I later took as subjects in their own right when I began painting again in 2010.”

 

Read  I Can See His Lips Moving, the Voices of John Yeadon   George Shaw’s Introduction to the catalogue of the Fearful Symmetry exhibition here

 

This was the last of three ‘retrospective’ exhibitions John Yeadon is having over a 12-month period:

Three Witches  Feb – April 2018 The National Museum of Computing, Bletchley Park, Milton Keynes.

What’s the Meaning of This, Yeadon at 70  May – June 2018. Newsroom Gallery, CET Building, Coventry.

Fearful Symmetry incorporating Unbelievable Stories and the Ventriloquist Dummies  January 2019. Lanchester Research Gallery, Coventry University.