Michael Upton (1938–2002) was a British artist notable as a painter, performance artist and teacher.

Biography

Upton was born in

Birmingham Birmingham ( ) is a city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1.145 million in the city proper, 2.92 million in the We ...

and after studying at the

Birmingham College of Art The Birmingham School of Art was a municipal art school based in the centre of Birmingham, England. Although the organisation was absorbed by Birmingham Polytechnic in 1971 and is now part of Birmingham City University's Faculty of Arts, Design a ...

from 1954 to 1958 he went on to study at the

Royal Academy Schools The Royal Academy of Arts (RA) is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly in London. Founded in 1768, it has a unique position as an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects. Its purpo ...

in London, until 1962, where his friends included

David Hockney David Hockney (born 9 July 1937) is an English painter, draftsman, printmaker, stage designer, and photographer. As an important contributor to the pop art movement of the 1960s, he is considered one of the most influential British artists o ...

. While he was still a student Upton was awarded a Leverhulme Scholarship and an Abbey Scholarship in 1962, which allowed him to study in Rome. He was also the winner of the 1971 Cassandra Foundation Award (William Copley), New York, and a major South West Arts award in 1981. Upton took a teaching post at the Royal Academy Schools and also served as an external assessor and visiting tutor at other art schools. He exhibited widely, having several solo shows in London, mainly at the Anne Berthed Gallery, as well as in New York in 1987 at the Yale Centre for British Art and the Anthony Ralph Gallery in New York. From 1989 to 1972 he was a visiting Lecturer at Novia Scotia College of Art & Design (NSCAD). Returning to the UK he became a Senior Lecturer at

Maidstone College of Art The Kent Institute of Art & Design (KIAD, often ) was an art school based across three campuses in the county of Kent, in the United Kingdom. It was formed by the amalgamation of three independent colleges: Canterbury College of Art, Maidstone Col ...

where he was tutor to

Stephen Partridge Stephen Partridge (born 1953) is an English video artist

and David Cunningham, amongst others. He also took part in numerous group shows, from the ''First Day Covers'' exhibition in what was then the Newlyn Orion Gallery, in 1980, to ''Artists Against Apartheid'' at the

Royal Festival Hall The Royal Festival Hall is a 2,700-seat concert, dance and talks venue within Southbank Centre in London. It is situated on the South Bank of the River Thames, not far from Hungerford Bridge, in the London Borough of Lambeth. It is a Grade I l ...

in 1985. With his close friend, the painter Peter Lloyd Jones, Upton founded the performance art group ''London Calling'', based at the

Institute of Contemporary Arts The Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) is an artistic and cultural centre on The Mall in London, just off Trafalgar Square. Located within Nash House, part of Carlton House Terrace, near the Duke of York Steps and Admiralty Arch, the ICA ...

in London. He lived for many years in Mousehole, Cornwall, and died in Truro on 20 September 2002, aged 64. Examples of his work is in the

Arts Council Collection The arts are a very wide range of human practices of creative expression, storytelling and cultural participation. They encompass multiple diverse and plural modes of thinking, doing and being, in an extremely broad range of media. Both h ...

at the

Southbank Centre Southbank Centre is a complex of artistic venues in London, England, on the South Bank of the River Thames (between Hungerford Bridge and Waterloo Bridge). It comprises three main performance venues (the Royal Festival Hall including the Nati ...

in London, in the

Government Art Collection The Government Art Collection (GAC) is the collection of artworks owned by the UK government and administered by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS). The GAC's artworks are used to decorate major government buildings in t ...

, and in the

British Council The British Council is a British organisation specialising in international cultural and educational opportunities. It works in over 100 countries: promoting a wider knowledge of the United Kingdom and the English language (and the Welsh la ...

collection. His artistic estate is represented by Messum's of London.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Upton, Michael 1938 births 2002 deaths 20th-century English male artists Alumni of the Royal College of Art Alumni of the Birmingham School of Art Artists from Birmingham, West Midlands English performance artists

Biography

References

Further reading

External links