#john bunker

[unit-3]

Tarantula focuses on John Bunkers ongoing commitment to producing large scale collages and assemblages. These works highlight his ambitions for the medium of collage and through them Bunker creates a very singular and original exploration of the protean possibilities of abstract art now. "John Bunker's work is situated at the nexus of complex interactions between modernism, abstraction and realism. It is a body of work that affirms my belief that abstract art must, at its core, if it is worthy of our interest, strengthen and reaffirm our relation to the world not retreat from it. The world that it addresses is characterised by extreme and rapid transformation, in which, as Karl Marx had it, "...all fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all the new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify". In such a world it is, I believe, ever more incumbent upon artists to invent languages, strategies, and forms by which to communicate a coherent understanding. John Bunker's work does this by extending a dialogue with the wider history of 20th and 21st century art, but also -crucially- with the social and material world in which he lives. He rejects both the self-serving autonomy  of much of the the modernist canon and theoretical navel-gazing of so much of what has followed. [....] The language in which John Bunker's work speaks is neither private, nor esoteric. It is, rather, historically rooted and mediating- and generative of beautiful results. It's beauty is not escapist or soothing, but rather stands within Chernyshevsky's definition: 'Beautiful is an object that expresses life or reminds us of it'." Ben Wiedel-Kaufmann.

[stclaretarot]

angel and roses, john bunker, watercolor and metallics, 1996

[unit-3]

Faint Young Suns. John Bunker: New Work.

Bunker’s latest outing, ‘Faint Young Suns’, takes its name from Cosmologist's slang for stars that are still growing- gradually increasing their individual quality of light energy- a light that will carve out the destiny of their evolving solar systems. Bunker sees a parallel with his changing approach to making paintings. The elegant tonal arrangements of found materials for which Bunker is known have taken a back seat. Now, it seems, Bunker is working more with paint and treating colour like a raw and unstable energy. By forcing ever more densely packed fragments of paint together, it's almost as though a kind of visual equivalent to atomic fission is being sought out. Each artwork seems to be a gathering up of contrasting colour forces, cued to engender a chain reaction, and in the process, exuding a new kind of painterly energy. It's no accident though, that the origins of these artworks stand in stark contrast to the intimations of the cosmological. All the materials in play are formed of the detritus of making, of the very haptic machinations of everyday activities of spreading out paint on various surfaces from studio floor, to canvas, to glass panels, to paper stripped from advertising hoardings. Fragments are then chipped, ripped, chiselled and peeled away from their original settings at different points in the drying process. From these initial starting points the acrylic paint reveals itself as a harbourer of a plethora of material diversity, laden as it is, with a physical trace-memory of its original sites of application and any detritus that's been added to the mix. These abstract works do not aspire to represent the un-representable, ruminate on some notion of the sublime or the 'music of the spheres'. They are about the endless internal interactions of physical forces; the more one looks at these works, the more they seem to incite a visual charge. The complex interplay of colour and shape create dynamic pressures across these works that build and build with a self-generating energy much like ‘faint young suns’ themselves. All in all, these are abstractions that seek a slow burning brutal beauty unique to themselves but born of a very earthly myriad of visual relationships and materials.

[unit-3]

Testing: 2019

“Unit 3's Testing show ups the ante this year. The chosen artists select three others to show with them in Poplar's rough diamond of a gallery space. Thanks for the huge generosity of spirit of all the participants! 

Unit 3 is a project space available to artists working at ASC's Empson Street studios and it is a rare beast indeed. To have affordable exhibition space as part of studio rent within striking distance of central London is so important. But to be unencumbered by the bureaucracy of 'proposals', 'selection processes', 'committees', and 'prize giving' is rarer still. 

This is the third year in which I have the opportunity to share Unit 3 with a wider community of artists from London, the north of England and Europe. Some artists have returned for another go at choosing and some who were chosen by an artist last year take up the chance to select new artists of their choice this year. As before, all participants are primarily working with painting, collage and sculpture in general and aspects of abstraction specifically. The curatorial challenge for me is intensified this year by a greater number of participants and the unknown quantities that are the selections that they will make. What excites me about Testing: 2019 is that I get to test my critical and curatorial responses to the decisions of the chosen artists in a more immediate and dynamic way. Ultimately, the artists here are testing me, each other and themselves in the transactions they make.” 

- John Bunker

[unit-3]

Slam-Dunk New collages by John Bunker

Slam-Dunk. John Bunker New Collages.

"Collage allows me to constantly test the limits of what an abstract painting can be. I hope to find something like a new hybrid visual grammar in these clashes of matter and forms. By using the most basic materials to hand, gleaned from my city streets, I'm destroying and rebuilding paintings as I go. I enjoy forcing the history of abstraction into new and dynamic relationships with life lived." John Bunker 2015.  Many objects and painterly techniques coexist in Bunker's uncanny collagic realm. Slam-Dunk overtly combines print media, defunct advertising remnants and other detritus found in urban hinterlands with more traditional mediums to produce exquisite yet disquieting wall based assemblages. They are built up of internal relations of incongruous shaped parts to create a new whole without use of a stretcher or traditional support or surface. Working with extreme changes in scale and materials, Bunker's free reining abstractions channel both a brutal materiality and elegant formal relations creating illusive yet potent images.  Bunker was born in Norwich UK in 1968 and studied 'Art and Social Context' at Dartington College of Arts in Devon where he graduated in 1991. He moved to live and work in London in 1997. Since then he has developed a complex body of work focusing on the protean and contrary nature of collage and its divergent histories.  Bunker is a fiercely independent artist, curator and writer co-founding the art writing site instantloveland.com with Matt Dennis in 2018. Bunker’s collages have entered private collections alongside work by artists including Gillian Ayres, Georges Braque, Alan Davie, Robyn Denny, John McLean & John Hoyland. 

[sharky-boshaw-appreciation]

John's bunker glitch!

So this is really neat...

My brother was shot with a bliss bullet and it killed him instead of making him pass out. Instead of taking him to John or responding him, it brought him to John's bunker. No one was there and he was forced to walk really slow. He's currently looking around to find a way out. He can only open a few doors and can't get back up to the room John tries to tattoo you in.

It's really cool to look around John's bunker without worrying about peggies!

[unit-3]

Testing 1>2 2018 

Saturday 5th May 2-6pm at Unit 3 London, E3 3LT.

[unit-3]

LEAVE IT...

New work by John Bunker.

13 - 24 Nov 2017 by Appt.

PV Thursday 16 Nov 6-9pm