Dudley Edwards

Dudley Edwards (born 1944, Halifax, Yorkshire) is an English painter, draughtsman and applied artist specialising in illustration, textiles, ceramics, murals and photography.

Biography

Edwards was born in Halifax, England to Muriel and Jack Edwards and was educated at Halifax School of Art 1960 – 62 and then Bradford College of Art 1962 – 65.^[1] He then moved to London.^[2]

BEV

Edwards first came to prominence in 1967 during the Swinging London era, as co-founder of pioneering Pop Art collective ‘Binder, Edwards & Vaughan’ aka BEV – a collective consisting of artwork by Douglas Binder and Edwards,^[3] with David Vaughan acting as their manager/agent. Binder and Edwards produced vibrantly painted furniture:^[4] a notable piece being Paul McCartney’s "magic" piano.^[1][5][6] The piano now resides in his music room in London. According to McCartney writing the songs on the decorative piano “added to all the fun of it”.^[7] BEV were selected to represent the ‘Swinging Sixties’ at Madame Tussauds, in recognition of their artistic contribution to that era. The group disbanded in 1967.

1967 also saw Edwards painting murals in the homes of Sir Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, living in their houses for 6 months.^[2]

OM Tentacle

Later that year Dudley Edwards and Michael McInnerney merged their identity together as ‘OM Tentacle’, named after the OM sound, or OM point at the beginning of creation, according to Buddhist and Hindu teachings. OM Tentacle painted the front of the Dragon restaurant in the Kings Road, and made a number of psychedelic posters, record covers and book jackets.^[1]

When OM Tentacle disbanded Edwards went on to co-direct (with Martin Cook) a documentary film ‘FRED’ about a devotee of Meher Baba for Pete Townshend.^[1] In the intervening years he continued to Illustrate Record Covers, book jackets, magazines and posters. These were interspersed with commissions from other genres. In the summer of 1975 he was commissioned by Stan Peskett to photograph the Harlem Ballet in New York’s Rockefeller Plaza for Yves St Laurent.^[4] In 1982 Sheik Abdul Aziz-Zaidan commissioned him to paint a huge ceramic mural for his palace in Al Karj, and then - again working with Douglas Binder in 1976 he created a suite of sixteen ceramic murals for the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Defense HQ in Riyadh.^[8]

Teaching career

Dudley Edwards has taught at Hornsey College of Art, Stafford College of Art, Bradford College of Art. Leeds Metropolitan University and Cleveland College of Art. He has been a guest speaker at The Royal College of Art, London; The Commonwealth Institute, London; In Australia at Swinburne University, South Wales University and The Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, In India at the NiA institute, Delhi; and in Ireland at the National College of Art & Design, Dublin.

AMAZED Ltd

In 1995 Edwards joined family business ‘AMAZED Ltd’ which his partner Madeleine Edwards had started previously. The couple create rugs and wall hangings for celebrities and the Big Brother house.^[2] Items of their textile collections have been part of exhibitions in the modern art gallery Tate Liverpool and the V&A, London: England See below for citation.

Dudley still continues to produce work and has exhibited at:

Arts Council Touring Exhibition to Edinburgh, Glasgow & Cardiff; Galerie 5, Geneva, Switzerland; Association of Illustrators Gallery, London; England & Co, London; the Musee d’ Histoire Contemporaine, Paris; Brighton Art Gallery; Red House Gallery, Harrogate; The Victoria & Albert Museum, London; Tate Gallery, Liverpool; and Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt; Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna; the Whitney Museum of Art, New York, The Crossley Gallery, Dean Clough Mills, Halifax. Redhouse Originals, Harrogate; England.^[9]

References

Other Sources

1 Hathaway, Norman (2011). Electrical Banana. Damiani: Italy. pp. 62–83

2 Palacios, Julian (2010). Syd Barrett and Pink Floyd, pp. 214–216 Plexus Publishing, London. ISBN 0859654311