2021: 2Tone, Turner Prize & City of Culture Orchestra

During 2021 Coventry’s year as City of Culture John exhibited in A Very Special Place at the Ikon in Birmingham (also teaching on the Ikon Youth Programme) and exhibited in the 3rd Coventry Biennial of Contemporary Art 2021

His Modern Art – Disco Drawing in Coventry Biennial at the Herbert Art Gallery and his Miners Wives banner in the History Gallery at the Herbert were highlighted by Array Collective (winners of the Turner Prize 2021) as these works resonated with their activism and their Turner Prize exhibition.

Array Collective asked the Herbert and John to created two new labels for the works as an Array Collective intervention and the Collectives wish to engage with Coventry and the Herbert Art Gallery, they asked John if he would write something from the artists point of view on the work.

2. Again at the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum one of John Yeadon’s 1976 anti-fascist banners photographed at Coventry Carnival Against Racism, Hearsall Common in 1979, was featured in the 2Tone: Lives and Legacies exhibition in the exhibit by Mark Osborne this is then ‘slide show’, a visual record of the Coventry Music Scene 1979-81.

During Coventry2021 City of Culture John organised a Coventry Dresden Arts Exchange residency at the Meter Rooms and Small Works exhibition at the LTB (funded by the ACE), during the Coventry Dresden Friendship Festival. The Friendship Festival was a partnership of CovDDArtsEx, Coventry Association for International Friendship, Twin Studios Project and members of Coventry German Circle, presenting events as diverse as poetry, music, theatre, architecture, photography, film and art, from Coventry and Dresden, with lectures and forums and live links with artists in Dresden.

3. John also played his cello in Coventry Pride’s Classically Queer during the summer in the Cathedral Ruins and he is lead cellist in the newly formed City of Culture Orchestra.