Bo Lanyon’s work explores an entangled landscape of experience. Across sculpture & painting, interconnected navigations of materiality, colour & sensation explore questions around our core human desire to connect. The hand is a recurrent motif in the work, being used as a recognisable symbol for the human in a non-specific way, often speaking to motions, movements & feelings of connection across or through a space.
On graduation from the Royal College of Art in 2007, he was selected as one of the first Saatchi Gallery & Channel 4's New Sensations. Recent projects include a monumental scale painting commission for the flagship £16 million Moxy Hotel, Bristol, and A St. Ives Legacy, a podcast for Bricks speaking with Mercury Prize nominated musician Gwenno, artists Lucy Stein & Hannah Murgatroyd on painting, the British Modernist tradition, ancient Cornish fougous, living with the dead and the lasting influence of his grandfather, Peter Lanyon.
Cornish-Irish, Lanyon holds an MA from the Royal College of Art, has work in the Zabludowicz Collection & is currently based at Spike Island, Bristol. Recent solo exhibitions include: The Death of Optimus Prime, Test Space at Spike Island, Bristol (2019); Age of Panic, White Moose Gallery, Barnstaple (2017). Recent group exhibitions include: Tendencies in Painting, London Paint Club (2022), The London Bronze Collection, Squire & Partners, London (2019); The First World War and Its Legacy: Commemoration, Conflict and Conscience Festival, Bristol Cathedral and M-Shed, (2019); Where It Is, There It Is, Auction House, Redruth, Groundwork Programme (2018); Plymouth Contemporary 2017, Peninsula Arts and KARST, Plymouth (2017); Kith and Kin, Falmouth Art Gallery and Museum, Falmouth (2016).
Born Penzance, Cornwall // Lives & works in Bristol, UK