2014 Competition – Facts About Tony Minnion

Facts About Tony

tm4-162x300Tony Minnion collaborates across many different art forms with writers, story tellers, photographers, performers, musicians, DJ’s, scientists, fashion designers and poets and has worked with a wide range of partners including Tate Gallery (Britain and Modern), Museum of Modern Art – Oxford, British Museum, Horniman Museum, BBC, Stephen Lawrence Trust, St Paul’s Cathedral, Exeter Cathedral, the Barbican and the South Bank Centre,

Now based in Redruth, Cornwall he has spent the last seven years enjoying working in the South West delivering projects and training throughout Cornwall, Devon and The Isles of Scilly.

More interesting facts about Tony:

– When Tony isn’t working in schools he will usually be found scaling cliffs near his Cornish studio with canvas, easel and paints indulging in ‘extreme landscape painting’ – a risky combination of painting, climbing (and falling!) and getting soaked by crashing waves.

BBC2

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– One of Tony’s largest commissions with schools involved wrapping a 5 storey banner around the BBC’s Broadcasting House. The artwork covered 330 square metres of fabric and must be the largest pupil-generated digital artwork ever made. Printed on vinyl, it was so large that when the BBC finished with it Tony was able to cut it up into 120 multi-coloured tablecloths!

– Tony once used screen printed fabric to transform a huge underground car park at the Barbican centre into a magical ‘Poetry Forest’ to inspire 100’s of visiting school children to write poems and hang them from the trees.

– Tony decorated the inside of St Paul’s Cathedral for the Children’s Millennium Service with gigantic colourful banners featuring screen printed artwork from over 2000 children from 40 different schools across London.

– Tony worked with schools in Cornwall making props and costumes for an ambitious beach performance of Shakespeare’s ‘Tempest’ featuring a giant tall ship and a cast of thousands – on the day of the performance a real storm swept in from the Atlantic ocean breaking up the ship exactly on cue to the delight of the windswept audience!

– Tony first started screen printing to make fly-posters for punk bands, performance artists and ‘avant garde’ dance troops in London during the early 80’s

– Tony was commissioned by the National Trust to produce giant Alice in Wonderland wind chaser flags with children at Antony House after Tim Burton and the rest of the film crew had finished filming the movie there in 2010

– In Cornwall Tony runs regular one to one workshops with young people on the autistic spectrum using screen printing to develop their creativity and increase communication skills

– Over the last 30 years Tony has got over 5000 children to shout out the word ‘squeegee!’ (try it – it’ll make you smile!)