Stanley Spencer : Journey to Burghclere

About the book

Stanley Spencer was one of Britain s greatest twentieth-century artists. He became famous for two things: his celebration and immortalisation of his home town of Cookham in Berkshire - his heaven on earth as he lovingly called it - and the fusion in his paintings of sex and religion, the heavenly and the ordinary. In 1915 Spencer left home to serve as a medical orderly in the Beaufort Military Hospital in Bristol. Aged 24, he had rarely stayed away overnight from home. For ten months he scrubbed floors, bandaged convalescent soldiers and carried supplies around the vast, former lunatic asylum. In 1916 he signed up for overseas duty in Macedonia, where he saw violent action up to the eve of the Armistice. Five years after the war, Spencer started making large drawings of a possible memorial scheme based on his wartime experiences. So extraordinary were his sketches, and so committed was he to realising them in paint, that the Behrend family became his patrons, funding a purpose-built memorial ch

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Paul Gough Biography

Paul Gough is a British academic, writer, painter, broadcaster and the current Principal and Vice Chancellor of Arts University Bournemouth.

Biography

Gough was educated at Aberdeen Grammar School. He graduated from the Polytechnic Wolverhampton in 1979 and the Royal College of Art, London in 1985 with a Master’s degree in Painting. In 1991 he was awarded his PhD on First World War art.

Painting

As a painter, Gough has exhibited globally is represented in several permanent art collections – including the National arts Collection Fund, the Imperial War Museum, London; Canadian War Museum, and the National War Memorial, New Zealand.His most recent exhibitions have been in Melbourne, Australia, London, and Wellington, New Zealand. Gough was elected an Academician of the Royal West of England Academy in 2000.

Writing

As an author, Gough has published over 80 academic papers, and nine books which cover the representation of war and peace, including several books on the British artist Stanley Spencer and a study of the work of John and Paul Nash which was published as part of a comprehensive suite of exhibitions, commissions and other events he curated during the centenary period of the First World War (2014–18).In the past five years, Gough has given conference addresses and keynote speeches in Australia, New Zealand, Turkey, Macedonia, Belgium, France and UK.

Television, film and radio

As a broadcaster, Gough worked for a decade as a television presenter, researcher and associate producer on a range of creative arts programmes and documentaries, including the award-winning documentary Redundant Warrior, about the photographer Don McCullin. Gough also has a credit for design research in the Aardman Animations feature film, Chicken Run.

Academia

In addition to appointments on education and research panels in UK, Europe, Hong Kong and New Zealand, Gough was Deputy Vice-Chancellor at the University of the West of England, Bristol; and for six years, 2014-2019 Vice-President at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia. In 2020, Gough became Principal and Vice-Chancellor of Arts University Bournemouth.

References

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