up-stream

Jon’s work plays with the transformation of the 'ordinary' and concepts of ‘hidden verses normal' combined with a subversive or geological context. Using a wide range of skills, materials and new technology processes the work references quality and his experiences of hidden disability and outsider arts as the core: These include photography, video, digital sound and visual manipulation, installation, mapping and illustration with interwoven elements of art, sciences and autobiographical reinterpretation. His recent work outdoors in creating unique temporary artworks has engaged new audiences and inspired conversations reflecting the complex issues around disability, fragility and the nature of public art.

Jon’s journey started with the first stone he picked up at the age of 6, the same year he said while having his portrait drawn that he was to be an artist too. Unfortunately Jon did not train as an artist as this was bullied and abused out of him at school through misunderstandings and the social unacceptability’s of Dyslexia and Aspergers and their ‘outward’ influences. Jon did however gain a degree in geology before reverting and persevering to become a successful illustrator and conceptual artist. Jon has always sought to unify his past that he has concealed, looking beneath the artist and the geologist.

Bound within the artist’s supposed impairments, the Aspergers and dyslexia enable him to see this arts/music - science culture connection as ‘natural’ and to see the world he inhabits around him in a whole new light. As a young child Jon learnt to hear and read the rocks in the landscape before he could read about the Landscape in the books that he craved to interpret.
Brought up in a musical family Jon has always ‘listened’ and desired to create the music he could taste contained in the landscape (synaesthesia) But due to an inability to read music, the bullying at school and an imposed ‘hiding’ of his talent has never had the opportunity to present his ‘sound sculptures’ as music. This is a first for him, his love of electronic started at 15 at a Tangerine Dream concert where he was deeply moved by his ability to ‘see and feel’ the sound. He always wanted to create in this way but shyness and financial constrains as well as the non ability of the musical instruments of the time to create the sounds he saw stopped him. Recently with the advent of computer generated sounds he has been able to develop new and unusual methods of sound synthesis and generation. In 2008 he was awarded a leverhulme ‘artist in residency’ to create conceptual graphics and sound from ‘supernova – exploding stars’, this successful piece was widely informed by his desire to learn ‘the unforeseen’ stemming from his Aspergers.

For his recent Creative Campus project in 2010 Jon chose to weave geological theme and metaphor, to use the rich and descriptive geological language and colour the final graphical and musical outcomes with flavours that may be ironic and show disability, arts and geology in a new perspective. This work is part of a programme of personal research into geological metaphor for creative work, alongside his learning for ‘Look about’ a Cultural Olympiad mapping project within the University of Portsmouth (Faculty of Cultural and Creative Industry and School of Environmental and Earth Sciences) and the British Geological Survey. The elements of the Geological ‘story’ are eminently ‘findable’ if you ‘look’ in the right place with the right mindset, it is always open to reinterpretation on the finding of ‘new’ evidence, impartial, unemotional but honest.

Jon's events: Desires for the Unforseen and Dysarticulate II