John Plowman

John Plowman is a British artist.

John Plowman’s work is primarily concerned with communication, particularly through our relationships with everyday objects. In 1987, Plowman sparked a national debate on contemporary art and its communicative potential with an installation of washing machines piled up in a public park. The controversy generated by this work gave a true voice, within the context of an artistic approach, to simple consumer objects. His installation at La Friche de la Belle de Mai in Marseille continues this approach by using bottles as a medium for drawings that float inside each bottle. Carefully arranged calculations, following a precise logic, give each drawing not only the status of a message in a bottle but also that of a component of a communicative or linguistic structure. A thousand bottles are arranged in repetitive patterns, with a precise number of repetitions of drawings in different colors and varying amounts of water.
For Plowman, every manufactured object was originally a drawing, and every drawing is a tool for communication.
Since 1983, Plowman has participated in several exhibitions exploring artistic research on communication, such as The Golden Thread in 1986, and Metal in Motion in 1987 (both exhibitions were presented in several museums across Great Britain).

The installation currently at La Friche de la Belle de Mai was presented in 1995 at The Tannery in London and fits within a desire to “carry the message forward.” Plowman intends to reconstruct his installation several times, in multiple countries. This work thus becomes a symbol of exchanges between artists of different nationalities, which forms the foundation of the activities of the Triangle France and Triangle New York Associations.