Vaughan Grylls

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Vaughan Grylls (born 1943) is a British Artist and Educationalist.

Vaughan Grylls first showed at the ICA in 1970 immediately after leaving The Slade. He showed his ‘Pun-Sculptures’, an example being 'A Case for Wittgenstein' consisting of two white suitcases on one of which he had scrawled ‘I brought this in Case’ and on the other screened a photograph of the first case with ‘A Case for Wittgenstein' by Vaughan Grylls’ printed underneath in large black letters. In 1973 Grylls became co-director, with fellow Slade graduate Nicholas Wegner of The Gallery 65a Lisson Street NW1. Together they introduced ‘Display Exhibitions’. These shows normally lacked any artist e.g. 7th Kolner Kunstmarkt, Photography Hasselblad, Drug Abuse in Maine, and Contemporary Art. Artists were shown occasionally within the context of the display series e.g. John Latham and Rita Donagh.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s Grylls showed large photo-collaged murals up to 10 metres wide on political and/or historical themes. e.g. In Flanders Fields (1979) and Site of the Assassination of President Kennedy(1980). William Feaver, The Observer’s art critic at the time described this period of Grylls work as ‘news-story, location and news-gathering combined’. In 1984 Grylls left for America with his first wife (Gillian Daniell, the theatre designer) and their daughter (Pinny Grylls, now a filmmaker) to set up and run a new photography and video department for Williams College Massachusetts. In 1985 a retrospective of his photo-collaged murals was shown at the Elvehjem Museum of Art, University of Wisconsin.

In 1989 Grylls became Head (then Dean) of Art & Design at Wolverhampton Polytechnic, later the University of Wolverhampton. In 1996 Grylls became Director of the Kent Institute of Art & Design (KIAD). Alumni include the fashion designers Zandra Rhodes, Karen Millen and Wendy Dagworthy, the graphic designer Martin Lambie-Nairn and the artists Humphrey Ocean and Tracy Emin.

In 2002 Grylls was founding Chair of UKADIA - the UK Art & Design Institutions Association. This consists of all the UK’s specialist art colleges e.g. the Royal College of Art and Herefordshire College of Art & Design.

In 2003 Grylls proposed creating a new specialist university of over 6000 students studying art, design, and architecture by merging the Kent Institute with the Surrey Institute of Art & Design. In 2005 this was launched as the University College for the Creative Arts at Canterbury, Epsom, Farnham, Maidstone & Rochester. In 2005 Grylls returned to being a full-time artist. He is currently working on a series based in Syria & Lebanon entitled ‘Pictures from the Levant.’

Vaughan Grylls’ work, biography, exhibitions and publications can be seen at vaughangrylls.com