Biography
Alun Leach-Jones was born in 1937 in the Lancashire village of Maghull, and spent his childhood in the Welsh village of Glasfryn, Denbighshire. After an apprenticeship lasting three years with the Solicitors Law Society, Liverpool illuminating manuscripts and hand copying legal documents Leach-Jones continued to work with the law society and studied painting and drawing in the evenings at the Liverpool College of Art between the years 1955-57. After completing National Service with the British Army in West Germany, the artist immigrated to Australia in 1960, settling in Adelaide and attending the South Australian School of Art.
Since graduating from the school in 1963 Leach-Jones has travelled and exhibited widely both throughout Australia and abroad in a career spanning well over forty years. In 1966 his celebrated Noumenon series was shown with Australian Galleries in Melbourne and Leach-Jones was immediately recognised as being part of what was then labelled as ‘the New Abstraction’ in Australian art. Later in 1968 his work was included in the influential exhibition The Field held at the National Gallery of Victoria.
Amongst the numerous institutional exhibitions the artist’s work has been curated in are 10th International Biennial of Modern Art, Sao Paulo, Brazil (1969); Australian Prints, Pratt Graphic Centre, New York (1972); Alun Leach-Jones Paintings 1964 -1976 (Hurst Museum Survey),curated by Patrick McCaughey, Monash University Gallery (1976); 1st New York International Drawing Biennial, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York (1977); ‘Lis ‘81’, National Gallery of Modern Art, Lisbon, Portugal (1981); Australian Modern Masters, National Gallery of Victoria (1986); The Prints of Alun Leach-Jones 1966-1986, New England Regional Art Museum (1986); Everyman – The Invention of Signs, Geelong Art Gallery (1995); Australian Drawings from the Gallery’s Collection, Art Gallery of New South Wales (1997); Pictures for the sky, Museum fur Kunstdrachen, Germany (2000); Paper Matters, Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, University of Western Australia (2003); Six Years Abstracted 1967-72, TarraWarra Museum of Art (2005); Weltanschauung (Anthology of the 20th/21st Century) Goethe Institute, Palermo, Sicily and travelling (2006); and Marks and Motifs: Prints from the PCA Collection, QUT Art Museum (2006).
Collections that hold Leach-Jones’ work includethe National Gallery of Australia, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Queensland Art Gallery, National Gallery of Victoria, Art Gallery of Western Australia, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Museum of Modern Art, New York, National Museum of Wales, Cardiff, the British Museum, London, The Victoria and Albert Museum, London, Museum fur Kunstdrachen, Detmold, Germany, TarraWarra Museum of Art, QUT Art Museum, and numerous university and regional collections.
Past exhibitions
2011
8 November – 3 December
2009
Recent Paintings
21 July – 15 August
2006
26 August – 16 September