Christopher Bucklow

Bucklow is best known for his ongoing photographic series Guests (1993–present) and his improvisational paintings from the series To Reach Inside A Vault (2006–present). He is the author of numerous books and essays including The Sea of Time and Space (Wordsworth Trust, 2004), "This is Personal: Blake and Mental Fight" in Blake & Sons, Lifestyles and Mysticism in Contemporary Art (University College, Cork, 2005), What is in the Dwat: The Universe of Guston's Final Decade (Wordsworth Trust, 2007), and the co-author of Bacon and the Mind: Art, Neuroscience and Psychology (Thames & Hudson, 2019).

• Illustration — Color Photograph, 2009 by Bucklow Bucklow was born in Flixton, Greater Manchester, England. He graduated with a degree in art history in 1978. Between 1978 and 1995 he worked as a curator in the Prints & Drawings Department at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London where he researched Romanticism, photography, and developed an interest in the work of William Blake (British, 1757 – 1827). An account of Bucklow's career as a curator and the forces that propelled his transition to art praxis can be found in "Rhetoric and Motive in the Writing of Art History: A Shapeshifter's Perspective" in Remaking Art History (Routledge, New York City; 2007). Bucklow's early work (1989–91) was conceptual and sculptural, often taking the form of plant species that he altered genetically or grafted together. In the 1990s he created two bodies of photographic work, The Beauty of the World (1991) and Guest - also known as Tetrarchs, that were foundational for Britain's contemporary negative-less photography movement. Guests was created using a 30 x 40-inch pinhole camera, built by Bucklow, with thousands of apertures to make unique cibachrome chromogenic prints. Tetrarchs were created using either a 40 x 60-inch camera, or one with a 40 x 100 inches plate size. Guest (1993–present) features silhouettes of persons that appear to the artist in dreams. Friends, family, and fellow artists like Matthew Barney and Adam Fuss are featured individually in the work as a collective of figures drawn by the multiple solar images directed through the 25,000 apertures in Bucklow's camera. His interest in personal mythology, Jungian dream psychology, metaphor and the use of personification was continued in his subsequent paintings. To Reach Inside A Vault is a series of large scale improvisational paintings in which a commedia dell'arte technique is used to generate the subjects or plot. These paintings were exhibited in Bucklow's 2017 retrospective Said Now, For All Time at the Southampton City Art Gallery, UK.

• 2017 Alex Faulkner et al. Said Now, For All Time, Southampton City Art Gallery. Preface by Martin Harrison. • 2015 Alex Faulkner and Christopher Bucklow, Dimitri & Wenlop, Upton Noble, Ball Press,. • 2004 Prof David Alan Mellor et al. Christopher Bucklow: Guest, Blindspot Publications, New York. • 2004 Marina Warner et al. If This Be Not I, British Museum, London & Wordsworth Trust, Grasmere, With an interview by Adam Philips.