Summary of exhibitions and publications home

Jeffrey Dennis was born in Colchester, England, 1958 and studied at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London, 1976 - 80. He lives in London. His past paintings have embedded glimpses of contemporary urban life within landscapes of processed peas, rotting fruit, Victorian wallpaper designs and, more recently, the 'bubblescape': an organic matrix which seems to offer the potential for continual mutation and evolution.

He recently wrote about his paintings: My work is rooted in the daily experience of the city: how people move around, inhabit spaces and make sense of their daily routines. Of particular relevance to this and to the structure of my paintings are the ideas of proximity, contiguity and adjacency: these terms express the abrupt collisions of incident and thought, the habits nurtured by travellers and inhabitants to protect personal space and the interrupted narratives of encounters and conversations. The paintings themselves provide a fluid, mutable net to hold narrative fragments and connective elements in place; a landscape corresponding to the fragmentary mental maps which people construct in order to give their existence some measure of meaning.

His work was selected for Eastinternational 2007 at Norwich and his most recent solo exhibition was at Michael Richardson Contemporary Art, London, in Autumn 2008. His work has appeared three times in the John Moores Exhibition survey of contemporary painting, at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool (in 1999, 1997 and 1993), and featured in the British Art Show 3, 1990. He has been exhibited since 1979, including regular shows at Salvatore Ala in Milan and New York from 1984 to 1993, solo shows in London at Whitechapel Gallery in 1986 and Anderson O'Day in 1994 and New Voices, an exhibition of contemporary British art that toured worldwide 1991-7. In 2000 he was commissioned to make new work for the Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, as part of the exhibition as it is. He was a nominated artist for the Paul Hamlyn Foundation New Visual Arts Awards in 1998.

Although his paintings engage directly with contemporary life, they also maintain a dialogue with art of the past. His paintings were included in Secret Victorians, a exhibition touring UK and USA 1998 -2001, which examined how Victorian ideas have influenced artists working today, and also Drawing from Turner, at Tate Britain in 2007

His paintings are in the collections of the Arts Council of England, the British Council, the British Standards Institution, the Department for Business Innovation and Skills, Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain, Paris, Leeds Art Gallery, the Saatchi Collection, the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Swindon Museum & Art Gallery, the Tate, Unilever plc as well as private collections in UK, Europe and USA

He was a tutor in Fine Art at the Ruskin School of Drawing & Fine Art, University of Oxford, 1991-7, and is currently a part-time Senior Lecturer on the BA Fine Art Course at Chelsea College of Art & Design, University of the Arts London.

Further reading:
Art Forum  October 2003  review by Barry Schwabsky
the Independent July 15 2003  review by Sue Hubbard
Art in America June 1994  review by Debra Bricker Balken

Jeffrey Dennis ­ Extracts from the Log pub. Michael Richardson Contemporary Art, London 2008;
text by David Ben White & Jeffrey Dennis ISBN 978-0-9558723-2-7
Short Stories about Painting pub. Michael Richardson Contemporary Art, London 2005
edited by Jeffrey Dennis (book and DVD) ISBN 0-9549623-2-X
Coloured Dirt: a story from the book, reproduced in New Statesman Sept 12 2005

Jeffrey Dennis: A Crisis of Connections pub. Michael Richardson Contemporary Art, London 2003
essay by Martin Holman ISBN 0-9528502-4-9
Something in the Air (pp 342-6): Inclinations: Further Writings and interviews by Stuart Morgan: edited by Ian Hunt
published by Frieze (Durian Publications Ltd) 2006 ISBN 0-95274148-2
as it is: Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, 2000
text by Claire Doherty/Michael Prior/Jonathan Watkins (pp42-45) ISBN 0-907594-68-9
The Saatchi Gift to the Arts Council Collection: Hayward Gallery Publishing, 2000
text by Ann Jones, Julia Risness & Isobel Johnstone
(alphabetical entries) ISBN 1-85332-207-5
Secret Victorians: Hayward Gallery Publishing
text by Melissa Feldman & Ingrid Schaffner (pp20/22/23) ISBN 1-85332-186-9
John Moores Exhibition 21: National Museums & Galleries on Merseyside, 1999(pp56/7) ISBN 1-902700-05-8
'Jeffrey Dennis' Martin Holman  the London Magazine  February 1995
Jeffrey Dennis - Paintings: pub. Orchard Gallery, Derry, Northern Ireland 1993
text by Stuart Morgan ISBN 0-907797-73-3
Jeffrey Dennis: Paintings: pub Salvatore Ala 1988
text by Tony Godfrey

View more paintings at Art Space Gallery: Michael Richardson Contemporary Art, London

Read Lou Macleod's article, from 2009, featuring JD's experience of East London in the1980s in Disappear Here
Jeffrey Dennis discussed his work with Dougal McKenzie on Subjects of the Painter blog site (January 2012)

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current, recent, future exhibitions
or
a more complete list of exhibitions & publications (in PDF format)

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