Grantsrogers

GRANT SIMON ROGERS

British Visual Artist & Educationalist'

B. Singapore March 4th 1964 - the Son of Keith L Rogers (RAF) & Diane P Rogers. Brother of Lisa Jane Rogers.

Present residence, London, Great Britain

Early life & Education

Rogers early life was dominated by frequent change to his domestic life following his father numerous postings overseas and domestically. By the time Rogers had completed his secondary school education he was at his thirteenth school. From the very beginning Rogers used his drawing ability to influence his new class mates. Learning to draw from memory a host a Disney creations and characters, he used them to bribe his way into the affections of those around him. School for Rogers was not a happy or fruitful experience and to this day he has a profound distrust of teachers and the organised school regime, that he believes crushes creativity within a developing mind. He is fully aware that this is a defence against the fact that he left school with one recognisable qualification & unsurprisingly that was in Art.

Art College gave Rogers the chance to develop his portfolio for four years while studying the now rejected HND in Illustration. The tutors at this aspirational college were unsure of what to do with this particular intake of students as the College had it's eyes on a greater prize, University Status and as a result Rogers spent a lot of time in the Pub before reaching a Distinction Level or his "Doctorate in Chocolate."

Artistic Career

Rogers has been a practising artist in a vibrant London Art scene for over twenty years. On completing his studies at Portsmouth College of Art in 1985 he worked as a newspaper photographer for the South Coast News group, The Evening News and the Journal. On relocating to London in 1987 he worked for numerous photographic agencies and publications, moving from the photographic to the editorial desk in 1989 of the Financial Times, he was a contributing illustrator for lead editorial articles until 1990. From 1990 to 1992 Rogers worked with the distinguished British Animation Production Company TVC ( Television Cartoons) and the Walt Disney animation studios, then based in Pentonville, London.

In 1991 Rogers was a founder member of the Goodsway Group, a artist run collective located in the now redeveloped heart of the Channel Tunnel link in Kings Cross. Relocating the Cubitt Street in 1992 Rogers became one of the Directors who administered the now award winning gallery and artist collective. Following several years of hard graft Rogers gave up his studio and now works at his London based studio and home.

Exhibitions

WE ARE ALL VERY SMALL

the above exhibition of paintings has been exhibited in four different locations to date and there are plans for a further two in the coming year

Below are the artists comments on his works and these following exhibitions.

"I paint really quickly and draw very slowly. Both painting and drawing are acts of obsession when I lose myself in the thinking and mixing of the colour or the repetition of line or pencil mark.

My paintings are of domestic animals, mainly dogs. I see them as family for those who do not have one and I am interested in the emotional link between us and our pets. Pets for me have been, on the whole, imaginary, but I am fully aware of the physical and psychological health benefits of being around these creatures.

I am very interested in symbolism and the dog in western art has a long and varied tradition. Pagan or Christian, their various associations of death, loyalty and as banishers of heresy are to me, fascinating. Animals were represented realistically before the human body and some of the world’s oldest man made images are of animals. Culture or fashion, animals show us for what we are.

AUSTRALIAN FLY PAPERS

The drawings are of Australian bush flies that were ever present during my visit in 2006. I loved the guest houses & hotels, reminiscent of 1970’s B&B holidays. The famous Australian welcome was as warm as the weather.

The drawings have been carried out on a selection of Guest House styles, the wallpapers purchased online from Australian DIY stores. The “Flypapers” reflect three different interior themes in hotel interior design, the Orient, the Beach and Victoriana. The titles of these Screens are the GPS map reference for the subject or the places visited.

The drawings for me are reminiscent of “applied arts” rather than “fine” and this interest is fed by regular drawing excursions around the V&A museum. This combination of drawing and paper has led to more recent experiments in embroidery. Once again insects being the subject but the themes are very British.

Photography

Since 2011 Rogers has returned to photography as a "creative distraction"

He has been taking photographs since the age of six, when his first camera was a Kodak Instamatic. He now uses a middle aged Leica DIGILUX 2 which has "an aperture ring and a shutter speed dial in the right place for my hands and an absence of buttons that is pleasing, as I would not know what to do with them. The lens is lovely."

Rogers takes his photographs as a form of relaxation walking to and from work, and they are for his own pleasure. Therefore, and to his great surprise his photography has found aclaim both domestically and internationally amongst collectors, critics and curators.

"To my surprise and continued pleasure I never seem to run out of subjects to photograph."

Selected Exhibtions

2012 AMPS PhotoFusion, Brixton

MONTPELIER Effra FC

2009 MACKEREL FESTIVAL, Brighton Fishing Museum

CASTLE HOUSE 09, Camberwell, London

2008 WE ARE ALL VERY SMALL, The Barbican, London

AUSTRALIAN FLY PAPERS, La Galleria, Pall Mall,

MACKEREL FESTIVAL, Brighton Fishing Museum

2007 WE ARE ALL VERY SMALL Chapel Row Gallery, Bath

2006 WE ARE ALL VERY SMALL Gallery in Cork Street, London.

2005 THE BIG NOSED KID The Agency Gallery, St Martin's Lane, London

2003 CREATURES Nottingham City Art Gallery

1996 DAD Gasworks Gallery, Oval, London

1994 '12 x 12'; Espace Scolfort, Maubege, France

HOME BASE Cubitt Artists, open studios, Kings Cross, London

1993 '12 X 12'; Musee De Henri Boez, Maubege, France

CUBITT, Kings Cross, London

1992 THE WHITECHAPEL OPEN Atlantis Gallery, London

THE GOODSWAY GROUP Kings Cross, London

1988 BLACK AND WHITE Association of Illustrators Gallery, London (Prints)

1985 PHOTOGRAPHS Portsmouth City Art Gallery & Museum ( With Paul Hardy Carter, Photographer)

Curatorial Exhibitions

2005 UNSPEAKABLE the artist as witness to the holocaust, Imperial War Museum, London

1995 Gunter Forge, Cubitt Street Gallery, London (co-curated with Dr Rudi Fuchs, Director of the Staedlich, Amsterdam)

1994 'Titre A Venetre' Cubitt Street Gallery, (critic's choice, Time Out) An exchange exhibition with twelve French artists from Lille

1994 Ida Appelbrough, Cubitt Street Gallery, (critic's choice, Time Out and The Guardian)

"HEADONISM & FUTILE INTROSPECTION" The International Who's Who

"A STUDY OF DODGY DOGGINESS" Sarah Kent, TIME OUT

Educational life & Times

Rogers is currently employed at the Imperial War Museum London, where he co ordinates the education Programme for Family and Informal Learning. He now is passionate on the subject of Conflict and works with a team to inform young visitors and their parents on the controversial subject of armed conflict and history. This given his life long loathing of formal education continues to be a surprise to him. In 2007 he became a Fellow in Holocaust education for Yad Vashem, Jerusalem

His surpring love affair with Education developed as a result of his invitiation to show school groups around the National Gallery Collection in 1992, where he was then working as a gallery information assistant to support his creative career. Much to his surprise he found that he not only enjoyed himself but the schools and colleges he was charged with introducing the astonishing national collection, enjoyed themselves too. This soon led to time becoming a full time member of the education team and contributing to the Formal Education Programme, where he found that the theory of education was exactly the same, just with bigger words.

Rogers contributed in turn to the Education Programmes for: National Portrait Gallery; Victoria & Albert Museum; The Wallace Collection and was a resident artist for the Barbican.

From 1998 until the present day Rogers has been a member of the education facilitators for Art History Abroad a internationally renowned Gap Year organisation, providing tailor made tours of Italy. With this organisation he developed the use of speed drawing as a method of looking. Speed drawing was conceived that anything could be drawn in under two minutes, no matter what the final result. Working in Italy and since then Greece and Israel has fostered and a new interest in theology and the history of religion.

Rogers has worked at the IWM since the mid 1990's and still continues to believe it to be an accidental career. He has become a devotee of the Educational theorist and Philosopher Ivan Illich and continues to gently explore the concepts of Nationalism and intolerance through a practice of art and conversation.