Biography

John Paul Evans is Senior Lecturer in Photography at University of Wales Trinity St David, Swansea.

He is a Welsh born photographic artist who now lives in Devon. His work stems from an interest in gender representation and the polemics of representing men under patriarchy. In particular his interests focus on the politics of queer representation and challenging the process of naturalization. As Judith Butler asserts:

“If gender is something that one becomes-but can never be-then gender is itself a kind of becoming or activity, and that gender ought not to be conceived as a noun or a substantial thing or a static cultural marker, but rather as an incessant and repeated action of some sort”. (Judith Butler – Gender Trouble)

John Paul has exhibited nationally and internationally.

His work was selected for screening at the Voies Off Festival in Arles 2014.

Solo exhibitions include Bed Sheet Dreams 2005 ‘The Room Gallery’ London. A Different Point of View 1999, CBAT Cardiff & MAC Centre Birmingham, Dark Secrets…Mortal Thoughts 1997, a touring exhibition commissioned by Newport Museum & Art Gallery, and Hunks & Heroes 1996, Castlefield Gallery Manchester.

Selected group shows include From Common Differences-Diffusion International Festival of Photography 2013, Unreliable Truths - The Glynn Vivian Gallery 2008, Sitting Room 2007-8, and Barbarella 1998-9, touring exhibition for Kent Council.

Matrimonial Ties is an umbrella title that encompasses varied responses and challenges to the historical and cultural significance of the wedding portrait in western culture.

The works originated as a personal reflection on the current state of social change in Britain and Europe around notions or definitions of marriage.

In a time of transition it is possible to see a future where people of the same gender might be considered ‘marriage material’.

Whilst one cultural definition might shift, there is a personal awareness that individuals forming relationships across generation divides, whether straight or gay, will always be problematic ‘home-makers’, especially in terms of representation and conveyed meaning.

‘Home and Away’ adopts the visual metaphor of alienation in presenting the couple literally as ‘outsiders’. This picture of ‘otherness’ fluctuates between the poignant, the comic, and a potentially disturbing presence in the domestic space.

‘Till death us do part’ is a series of absurd permutations of the wedding portrait. These performative responses to ideas of marriage and domesticity evoke a sense of the uncanny – the ‘homely and un-homely’.