Artist

Chris Gollon

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Artist

Part of events on ArtRabbit in: London, Bexley

Chris Gollon (1953 - 2017) was an established name in British painting. He exhibited in St Paul’s Cathedral, London, and has works in major public collections including the British Museum. He enjoyed many solo shows, exhibited at Art Chicago and also with Yoko Ono, David Bowie and Gavin Turk in ROOT, a crossover exhibition of contemporary music and art created by Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth, at Chisenhale Gallery, London. His work is attracting increasing acclaim in the national press, specialist arts press and was featured on Alan Yentob’s BBC1 programme Imagine. The book on his life and work Chris Gollon: Humanity in Art by art historian Tamsin Pickeral, and endorsed by Bill Bryson OBE, was published in 2010. Chris Gollon was both First Artist in Residence and Fellow of The Institute of Advanced Study (2009), Durham University, and accepted an invitation to return as Artist in Residence at St Mary’s College in 2011. Later that year, Gollon’s painting ‘Birth’ was used as part of the story in Hollywood’s Twilight Saga movie Breaking Dawn (I). In 2014, his large solo exhibition in Guildford Cathedral, accompanied by a full-colour catalogue with text by award-winning novelist Sara Maitland, was very well received. In 2015-2017, the latter will become a major touring exhibition to British cathedrals, including Norwich, Chichester, Durham, Hereford and Romsey Abbey. Gollon had a lifelong interest in music and enjoys the company of musicians. Song lyrics very often led to exciting new imagery, as with his recent artistic response to the songs of leading singer/songwriter Eleanor McEvoy. From 2015 – 2017, they embarked on an artistic experiment in “boundary crossing” where one art form influences another, which has produced a new album ‘NAKED MUSIC’ by Eleanor (partly co-written with Lloyd Cole and with Dave Rotheray) and a new series of 25 paintings by Chris Gollon. This ongoing interplay of music, lyrics and imagery is now the subject of a new book ‘NAKED MUSIC’ by Jackie Hayden. NAKED MUSIC (exhibition and LIVE performance) headlined the Louder Than Words Festival in November 2016, supported by Arts Council England. Further in-depth interviews with Chris Gollon will appear in two forthcoming books to be published in 2017, one a new biography of Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth; the other a book on the Annunciation by Mark Byford (including interviews with Paul McCartney, Chris Gollon and Grayson Perry). His official information website: www.chrisgollon.com.