Paul Tonkin

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b. 1951, Southampton
Lives and works in London, England

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Paul Tonkin attended Southampton Art College and Canterbury Art College. At Canterbury his tutor was Geoffrey Rigden who had met American painters Kenneth Noland and Jules Olitski through working at Kasmin’s Gallery in Bond Street. He became interested in the work of Rothko, Clyfford Still, Morris Louis and Hans Hofmann. Encouraged by Rigden and another tutor, Ian Dury, he explored techniques of painting using acrylics which were then relatively new. A music fan, he briefly joined Dury’s band Kilburn and the Highroads but soon realised that his training and experience made the less glamorous route of painting the one to follow. After leaving art college he moved to Stockwell in South London and set up a studio in a squat in Brixton (above an Oxfam shop opposite Desmond’s Hip City Reggae shop). He participated in annual exhibitions held at Stockwell Depot (1976 – 79). These included sculptors, Peter Hide and Katherine Gili and painters Jennifer Durrant and Alan Gouk. The exhibitions were thoroughly documented by Sam Cornish in his book ‘Stockwell Depot 1967-79’. John Hoyland invited him to exhibit in the Hayward Gallery Summer Exhibition 1980 alongside John McLean, Albert Irvin, Frank Bowling and others. Other opportunities followed: a Serpentine Gallery Summer Show in 1982; the Castlefield Gallery, Manchester in 1985 and the Whitechapel Open Exhibitions between 1984 and 1994. These brought favourable reviews from the likes of John Russell Taylor, Tim Hilton and Matthew Collings. Colour was and is the key: ‘…his colour is positively Venetian’ and ‘Look at the way he bashes in that yellow, lifting his picture from its self-absorption’ (Hilton). The late 1980s found him working at Greenwich Studios where he became involved with a group of artists searching for more permanent workspace. This they eventually found at Harold Wharf, Creekside where, in 1995 APT was brought to life as a registered charity dedicated to the provision of studios, a gallery and art education.  Around this time he renewed contact with John Hoyland which led to the curation with Dr Cuillin Bantock of a series of exhibitions (1999 – 2003) at the Deli Bar, near Hoyland’s home and studio in Charterhouse Square, Clerkenwell. In 2006 he was invited to show a large painting in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition which was illustrated in the catalogue. His work was also hung in the Royal Academy in later years and featured in a BBC2 documentary about the Summer Exhibition. He was given a solo exhibition at the Poussin Gallery in 2009 (with a catalogue introduction by John Hoyland) and another at the Delfina Restaurant in 2011. Visits to North Wales, Cornwall, Scotland, Switzerland, Spain, the Adriatic, Ireland and the South of France in recent years have led to a renewed involvement with landscape.  While both music and landscape contribute to the experiences which inform his work, he remains committed to non-representational colour painting built up from improvised elements.

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Exhibition

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Paul Tonkin: Glimmering  24 Nov - 22 Dec 2024 (extended to 31 January 2025), Felix & Spear (press release)