John Brown. Artist Statement and Selected Exhibitions and Projects
John Brown is an Edinburgh-based artist who uses a wide range of sources, methods and formats to make large, complex installations that place small multiple scenarios and objects against a backdrop of the epic to create new narratives.
At the core of all his work, there is an obsession with drawing, painting, model-making and an interest in the heart-breaking amount of imagery and stuff that the world contains at this point in history.
In recent work, John uses the idea of the ‘unrealised project’ as a way of investigating large-scale or potentially impossible undertakings through sequences of small-scale paintings, proposal drawings and photographs of models.
For the show ‘Narratives’ at the Tatha gallery, alongside Ade Adesina, John has developed a group of paintings called Voyagers that visualises different travellers moving through a landscape with domestic objects, cultural items and symbols of civilisation.
John Brown was born in Dumfries in the southwest of Scotland and received an MFA from Edinburgh College ofArt in 1991. He returned there to teach and now works with Art students from all year groups. He currently course organises and teaches ‘Adventures in Drawing’, Printmaking, Model-making and Painting.
Selected Exhibitions and projects.
Voyagers. A group of works shown alongside work by Ade Adesina at the Tatha Gallery, Newport, Dundee. 2024
Frontiers; Painting in Scotland Now. A survey of recent work by Scottish artists. Royal Scottish Academy. 2024
Learning through Play. Edinburgh City Art Centre 2024, as part of the Edinburgh Science Festival. 100 Photographs of model studio spaces that show a set of components being recombined and formatted into different scenarios and ideas.
Builders. Royal Scottish Academy 2024. A group of 64 small paintings of imagined studio spaces showing protagonists fabricating various large-scale objects and paintings.
The Experimenters. Edinburgh City Arts Centre as part of the Edinburgh Science Festival 2023. Photographs of miniature workshops with related objects.
Nomads. Royal Scottish Academy Open 2023. Edinburgh.
2022. 64 Invented campervans driving in various directions.
The Strange Wonder. Installation in the Royal Scottish Academy 2022. 350 small paintings on the theme of optimism and invention arranged on the floor.
We Are Building a New World. Edinburgh City Arts Centre as part of Edinburgh Science Festival 2022. 128 small paintings each depicting someone making an element of a world.
Living in the Trees. Permanent installation of paintings in the new Haematology Centre at the Edinburgh Western General Hospital. 2021. 36 paintings of invented treehouses as a means of escape.
Mixed Nuts. Installation at Govan Project Space Glasgow 2019. 1600 paintings on cardboard box sections representing an accumulation of objects and experience.
The Modelmakers. Edinburgh City Arts Centre as part of the Edinburgh Science Festival 2019. 36 paintings showing various protagonists learning through making something new.
The Total Situation. Installation Prenzlauer Studio, Berlin 2018. A representation of rubble as a series of paintings on cardboard box sections
How Why What?. George Square Library Exhibition space 2017. A selection of books and objects from the collection of the University of Edinburgh alongside new work on the themes of education through drawing and painting.
Epic. MOK gallery, Olsztyn, Poland. 2015. Two-person show with Charlie Stiven that utilised the multiple and changes of scale to create unexpected configurations.
Global topics. Permanent site-specific Artwork at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre (Completed 2013). The work uses simplified symbols to depict the range and depth of discussion that takes place at the Centre.
Twitstreet. Solo show. SMFA Boston USA 2012. Multiple small fragments works on paper exploring a particular time and experience.
Nutsville. Solo show at the Open Eye Gallery, Edinburgh 2009. 1200 paintings on wooden offcuts that aimed to combine images of simple day-to-day events and objects into a universal story.
Nuts and Gum. Two-person show with Michael Krueger at Space 204, 2009. Nashville, USA. This body of work was a series of super-dense collaged drawings on shaped cardboard that focused on the madness of commuting and urban environments.
Recent awards include;
The Lyon and Turnbull Award for Painting, 2023.
The RSA Award 2023,
The Tatha Gallery Award 2023
and the William Littlejohn Award 2020.