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Even
the name of the exhibition 'From The University Of Doubt To The
Bulging Sumpters Of Bercium' suggests that John is a man of many
parts and many ideas - and anyone who's been along to his one-man
show at Halifax's Dean Clough Galleries with this in mind won't
have been disappointed.
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| John
Ross: "Taking the p*** out of the human condition." |
John's
exhibition takes us from the early part of his career as a graphic
artist to scenes captured recently near his non-Huddersfield hideaway
in Andalucia. It seems one of the local bar owners there keeps camels
and John discovered that a 'sumpter' is a camel's hump! Oh, and
in case you're wondering, John's particular University Of Doubt
(some time after the aforementioned stint at Pontins) was Leeds
Metropolitan University where he worked until 2003.
Lots
of his weird - but very often wonderful - works are featured in
the exhibition, revealing a lot about the man and the way he works.
However, John is adamant: "It's not a retrospective."
To emphasise this, he points to a lithograph in the corner, The
Rotting Horse dating from 1974 - which won the Sunday Times Illustration
Prize - while nearby are his Spanish landscapes which were created
within the last year.
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| John
Ross' Black Dog In A Landscape |
Despite
this John admits: "They certainly cover a long time. The work
I was known for a few years ago was to do with the great Northern
tradition of lampoon, of p***take. We're talking of the tradition
of Hogarth, Rowlandson, Gilray and, more recently, of Ralph Steadman
and Gerald Scarfe. My black and white work particularly belongs
in that whole thing of taking the p*** out of the human condition.
More recently, since I've not been working at Leeds, I've turned
my attention more to the technique of landscape. Strangely enough
it's been something that's been playing on my mind for a long time."
First
glance at the pictures on show at Dean Clough reveals that history
seems to play an important part in John Ross' work. He agrees: "Those
who don't understand history are condemned to repeat it. I went
to a Secondary Modern school but we had some wonderful history teachers,
and I suppose that stuck with me, and now my favourite reading is
biography and history. Some of these earlier works in museum cases
are based on the First World War [Museum Construction With Petrified
Carnivores, 1985] Many of my uncles were in the First World War
and as a boy when I used to go into their various sheds and outhouses
there were instruments for catching various animals, be they weasels
or stoats."
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| Detail
from John Ross' 2001 work The Easter Uprising |
One
aspect of recent history which grippped John's imagination at a
time BEFORE it was mere history is the end of the coalmining industry,
as shown in his work The Illustrated History Of England (see
top of next page). The picture itself depicts a former coalminer
sadly playing the accordion, shotgun by his side, decaying pit wheels
behind him - slowly collapsing in on themselves. In the light of
the recent anniversary of the end of the
1984-85 miners' strike, this seems particularly poignant.
John says: "It's about the destruction of the pits where we
come from. Just outside Huddersfield there were any number of pits
and pit communities which we saw destroyed in that period of time.
I did some work for Yorkshire Miner, and various other organs. The
Illustrated History Of England even appeared in [German newspaper]
Frankfurter Allgemeine!"
[All paintings
and illustrations © John Ross]
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