John Neylon

John Neylon (born 1944) is a South Australian arts writer and arts educator as well as being an art critic, curator, painter, and printmaker. He is an art critic for The Adelaide Review, an author for Wakefield Press, and a lecturer in art history at Adelaide Central School of Art.

Biography

John Neylon was born in 1944 in South Australia. He is an independent arts writer, critic, curator, painter, printmaker and arts educator in Adelaide, South Australia. He has a Diploma of Teaching (Visual Art) from the South Australian School of Art (1966), where he studied with Franz Kempf. He also has a Bachelor of Education from the South Australian College of Advanced Education (now University of South Australia) (1982).

From 1988 to 2005, he was Head of Education at the Art Gallery of South Australia and, since 2012, has lectured in art history at Adelaide Central School of Art. He became the inaugural art critic of The Adelaide Review in 1985 and continues to write for it.

He has curated exhibitions for the Adelaide Central School of Art, Flinders University Art Museum, Murray Bridge Regional Gallery, and Carrick Hill.

Neylon is an author who has written several books on Australian and South Australian artists including Robert Hannaford, Hans Heysen (co-authored with Jane Hylton), Greg Johns, Franz Kempf, Stephen Bowers (co-authored with Damon Moon) and Aldo Iacobelli, as well as contributing catalogue essays for many exhibitions. Neylon has also been on the judging panel for the Whyalla Art Prize (2011), and the Waterhouse Natural History Art Prize (2006).

Neylon has been described as one of Adelaide's longest-established art critics and as "penning well-considered, witty, vastly knowledgeable judgments on hundreds of exhibitions a year with sustained panache".

Awards

In 2005, Neylon was awarded the Minister's Award for Excellence in Arts Education by the South Australian Department of Education. In 2014, he was the inaugural winner of the Lorne Sculpture Biennale Scarlett Award for critical writing.