John Newling

John Newling was born in Birmingham in 1952 and has an acclaimed international reputation creating projects and installing works in the UK and many other countries.

Nottingham-based, John Newling is a pioneer of public art with a social purpose. His works explore the natural world and the social and economic systems of society – such as money or religion. To this end Newling has innovated the possibilities and benefits for art in a renewed social and conceptual framework.

He belongs to a generation of artists whose work evolved from Conceptual Art, Land Art and Arte Povera – art movements occurring during the 1960s that placed emphasis on the concept, process and site of the work, alongside material and aesthetic properties.

During his time in America (1985), as the first recipient of a Fulbright fellowship in visual arts, Newling produced works in hotels, swimming pools, burnt out cars, sales of memorabilia and on the streets of Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington DC and New York. This experience marked the beginning of his enduring interest in notions of Place both in terms of cartography and context. This has generated many works over the following decades both gallery based and site specific.

Reviews and critiques of his work have been included in, amongst others, Sculpture in 20th – Century Britain (Henry Moore Institute), Installation art in the new millennium: The empire of the senses (Thames and Hudson) and Leavingtracks: artranspennine98 (artranspennine98).

Monographs on his work include The Sacred and The Mundane, Currency and Belief, Stamping Uncertainty, Westonbirt Wishes, Chatham Vines and An essential disorientation. In 2005 a double volume monograph of his research essays from 1994 to 2005 was also published. Most recently a comprehensive monograph (Spinning) was published to coincide with his first survey exhibition, Ecologies of Value at Nottingham Contemporary 2013.