Artist’s Talk: Queering Edward Lear

Artist John Yeadon considers Edward Lear’s ambivalence towards the picturesque tradition, producing landscapes that are strange rather than sublime. Yeadon compares Lear’s nomadic life to other Victorian explorers, such as Lord Leighton and Richard Francis Burton, who most likely travelled to escape the repressive laws on sexuality in Britain.   

Introduced by Channi Dorset, Creative Producer, the talk starts in Edward Lear: Moment to Moment  and then moves into the SHOUT Festival Showcase (Wednesday 9 – Sunday 13 November 2022) where Yeadon explores the relationship between his own paintings and a queer art history.

Organised in partnership with SHOUT Festival to coincide with Ikon’s exhibition Edward Lear: Moment to Moment  which is supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), The Finnis Scott Foundation and University of Oxford.

About the artist 

Over five decades, John Yeadon’s artistic practice has explored issues of politics, sexuality, food, national identity, the grotesque and carnival. A painter and printmaker, who also experiments with digital and photographic techniques, Yeadon embraces the pornographic, humorous, oppositional, disquieting, difficult, obsessive and unfashionable. 

Yeadon has exhibited nationally and internationally with solo exhibitions at the Centre for Contemporary Art, Glasgow, Royal Festival Hall, London, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, Vilma Gold, London, Phoenix, Brighton and The National Museum of Computing, Bletchley Park.