Author Archives: John B Ledger

Historicide/”Who made the monster?”

I admit this new drawing isn’t a cause for personal celebration. It’s a completion of a series of works spanning the last few years, that I wish to see the end of now, begging for a closure of a wound through which the works have spoken. I once thought this was just self-dislike, but it’sContinue reading “Historicide/”Who made the monster?””

YSP: a requiem for a dream

Yorkshire Sculpture Park: the citizen’s park that never was The following views are about an insider, albeit of no particular significance to the organisation, who wasn’t disgruntled, but who lamented and mused from the gallery benches over what this place could have been. I spoke recently to a friend about how travelling by a cityContinue reading “YSP: a requiem for a dream”

Digging Deep – 40 years on since the Miners’ Strike’

Next Saturday I’ll be exhibiting new, old and re-imagined work for the exhibition ‘Digging Deep – 40 years on since the Miners Strike’, which will be held at @artbombuk , Unitarian, 60 Hallgate, Doncaster. Opening event, Saturday 2nd March 1 – 6 PM, exhibition till 21st April 2024. Art, Conversation, Music, Film. A special eventContinue reading “Digging Deep – 40 years on since the Miners’ Strike’”

The Mental Health Strike ’24

On 6 March 2024 the world’s first Mental Health Strike brought normal life to a near-total stand-still. One after another, people from many walks of life bridged the deep social divides, by publicly declaring that they could no longer maintain good mental health under contemporary work/life conditions. The Mental Health Strike initially began as aContinue reading “The Mental Health Strike ’24”

Looking back 6 years

The mental health strike. A strike that I posited happened in an alternate reality in late January (the week always desrcibed as the most depressing) in 2018. We do live in a very different reality now, though. A very unexpected one, still confused and defined by a vague sense of dislocation, after a pandemic nobodyContinue reading “Looking back 6 years”

Near desert…

Langsett remains weird. An intrusion of the outside. Dream-like, in that all our dreams are breached by that which shouldn’t be there. Nor should I… be here, ‘down there’. I’m lost. That horizon line that greats you as you ascend the first set of hills, with its weirdly rhythmical monotony, calls you forward… Yet itContinue reading “Near desert…”

Only in absence

During the course of my life I’ve realised that I can only reach out and embrace something’s presence/my presence in its total absence. An inability to be at ease with the living, to do what the living do, as led me to be a living ghost, who in turn chases other ghosts. I’ve developed aContinue reading “Only in absence”

Monochrome takes on works from the last 10 years.

Around ten years ago it began to become seem necessary to introduce elements of colour variation into my drawings. Before this time they nearly entirely monochrome. I lost sight of the qualities of Monochrome, that colour can often compete with the context. Sometimes this works really well, but sometimes it doesn’t, and I guess there’sContinue reading “Monochrome takes on works from the last 10 years.”