JOHN ATHERTON
John Atherton (b.1977) is originally from Scotland where he studied Graphic Design at The Glasgow School of Art. He lived and worked in London as a screen printer, designer, curator and assistant to international artists before attending The Royal College of Art from 2017 till 2019. After graduating he was selected for both the Clifford Chance Purchase Prize, and Travers Smith, CSR Art Programme. He now lives and works in Sweden.
John Atherton’s formal abstract works are unequivocally in the tradition of modern abstract art. At first sight, they are to be appreciated entirely in the realm of pure visual abstraction and the pleasures of viewing carefully composed colour and form. However, counter-intuitively to this tradition, Atherton’s work emerges not from the lineage of abstract art but from that of portraiture through the commemorative representations found in an anonymous school yearbook from the 1980s.
The yearbook is a seemingly arbitrary starting point but is in fact a quite unpredictable and fortuitous beginning. It is an object of commemoration and, for many people, an object of nostalgia, distance, and lost time, it symbolises a rite of passage, a point of departure, it captures a moment of infinite possibility, the imminent journey to an unknown destination.
Atherton’s work is screen printed onto different papers and collaged together but Atherton thinks of himself as a painter, the piles of paper, his colour palette. These layers of materials and imagery embody a vast hinterland of narratives and creative ideas that echo back to the yearbook. The creative journey and the personal narratives are encoded in the stratification of materials with only the most recent layer fully visible.
Historically a distant landscape depicted in a portrait painting informs the viewer of a sense of nostalgic contemplation in the sitter. It is with this in mind that Atherton suggests a perceptual shift, that his abstract works could be interpreted by the viewer as a scene through a picture frame window. The nostalgic contemplations of the the sitter (an absent presence) are inventions conceived by the viewer, as they unravel the abstract ambiguity of the work.
THIS LANDSCAPE HAS CHANGED
I know there are no demons in the undergrowth
At least I think so
Forming faces in clouds and all manner of things
Unlimited
I see the angry face of a malevolent spirit
a flaming giraffe
a tea clipper in full sail
I transform my perception
I decide to build castles in the air
Invent my own faces in the sky
Literal recognisable objects incongruously appear
This landscape has changed
EDUCATION
(2017-2019) Royal College of Art, MA, Fine Art, Print
(1995-1999) Glasgow School of Art, BA, Visual Communications
(1994) Leith School of Art, Foundation level
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
2024
Art Auction, Nordic Art Agency, Malmō
Collective Exhibition, Marie Gallery 5, Malta
2023
Nostalgia of Distance Box Set Launch, Nordic Art Agency, Malmō
Nostalgia of Distance, Nordic Art Agency, Malmō (Solo)
2022
Summer Exhibition, Nordic Art Agency, Malmō
Stripped, Galleria Azur, Madrid
Seeing Abstraction, Galleria Azur, Madrid
2021
Summer Exhibition, Jealous Gallery, London
Homecoming, Galleri Revolt, Boras (Solo)
Hot Sheet Expo, the Department Store, London
2020
An Absent Presence, Galleri SM, Ulricehamn (Solo)
Lures, Tension Fine Art, London
2019
Clifford Chance Purchase Prize, London
Travers Smith, CSR Art Programme, London
Quivering Horizons, Berwick Upon Tweed
What A Relief, CGP Gallery, London
Images Can Be, The Crypt Gallery, London
PUBLICATIONS
2023
Nostalgia of Distance Box Set Launch, Nordic Art Agency, Malmō
2020
Exhibition article, Boras Tidning
Hot Sheet Expo, Exhibition Publication
Exhibition article, Ulricehamns Tidning
Spring, bluebee Magazine
2019
Clifford Chance Purchase Prize, Exhibition Publication
Travers Smith, CSR Art Programme, Exhibition Publication
TALKS
Nordic Art Agency Podcast: Nostalgia Of Distance
Artist Talk, Nordic Art Agency, Malmö
Nordic Art Agency Podcast: Summer Exhibition
Artist Talk, University for the Creative Arts, Farnham
Artist Talk, University of Gloucestershire
Building An Artist Residency, Royal College of Art, London
WRITING
