Jack Dickson

In his current portraits, place and context are always present — but encoded rather than stated. Through the use of collage and mixed media, topographical maps, street plans, textile patterns, cultural objects and landscape, fragments are layered into backgrounds and clothing, partially obscured, hinting at the worlds a subject carries. Each element has been chosen; nothing is decorative. The work asks you to stay, to look slowly, to discover — and in doing so, to experience something of the accumulation that makes a life.
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His work describes what hybridity and displacement look like. What he is working toward — through ongoing research, encounter and studio practice — is work that evokes what this feels like: work that allows someone who has lived at a threshold between worlds to recognise their own experience, without either belonging or longing declared the winner. That is where his practice is heading.
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Jack has a sustained national television profile including BBC One’s Extraordinary Portraits (Series 4 and 5), Make it at Market and Sky Arts’ Portrait Artist of the Year. His work is held in public collections including the National Portrait Gallery’s online collection and the Guildhall, City of London Corporation. He has exhibited widely including a solo show at the Russell Cotes Gallery and Museum, Bournemouth, and group shows at Somerset House, Gallery 8 St James’s, and Mall Galleries, London. He is a member of Dorset Visual Arts and an associate member of Boscombe Radical Arts Collective.