John Yeadon

John David Yeadon (born 1948) is a British artist and art educator. A practicing artist for over 50 years, he explored issues of politics, sexuality, food, national identity, the grotesque and carnival. In the 1980s, his work was provocative with issues relating to male sexuality. An eclectic artist, essentially a painter and printmaker, his work has included text, digital images, and photography, and he has worked on banner making, theatre design and has collaborated with video artists.

Yeadon's grandmother was the ventriloquist Annie Howarth, who worked under the stage name Josephine Langley. Recurring themes in his paintings since 2010 include his mother and grandmother's ventriloquist dummies.

He has exhibited over 30 one-person shows throughout Britain and abroad, including in Portugal and Germany, and Britain, including the Royal Festival Hall, Centre for Contemporary Art, Glasgow and Ikon, Birmingham. His group shows included the British Art Show (1985/6) and exhibitions in Germany, Holland, Portugal and Hong Kong.

He set up the Coventry-Dresden Arts Exchange in 2012. one of the 'lavatory wall smut' paintings derided in the Coventry Evening Telegraph.

Fat

Again, Yeadon was criticised by the local media for including tiny images of obese people culled from the Internet in his exhibition on food; these pictures were removed from the exhibition. Fat: The mortality of the eater and the eaten at the Bath Place Community Venture in Leamington Spa in 2010.

Harwell computer

Yeadon's 9×7ft painting of the Harwell Dekatron computer, later known as the Wolverhampton Instrument for Teaching Computing from Harwell (WITCH), Portrait of a Dead WITCH, made in 1983, was exhibited at the 1984 Leicestershire Schools and Colleges show and subsequently purchased by Newbridge High School, Coalville, Leicestershire. Within two years of that school becoming a private academy school, the painting was sold at auction in 2015 to an undisclosed private buyer.

The painting was a subversive irony on 'computer art'; that is, a painting of a computer posing as 'computer art'. After 35 years, Yeadon painted Portrait of a Live WITCH, a second version of the work, for the 5th anniversary of the restoration of computer at the TNMC. In February 2018, the two paintings were brought together for an exhibition on Yeadon's 70th birthday at TNMC.

Teaching

Yeadon has been a visiting lecturer at Slade School of Fine Art and the Royal College of Art, at Goldsmiths College, Chelsea College of Art, Wimbledon School of Art, Glasgow School of Art and, whilst as a full-time Lecturer from 1973 to 2002, at Coventry University, where he eventually led the MA Fine Art course.

Works The Last Chilean Supper – Arts Council Collection, Southbank Centre Modern Art, Disco Drawing – Herbert Art Gallery & Museum