John Neylon

John Neylon was born in 1944 in South Australia.[1][2] He is an independent arts writer, critic, curator, painter, printmaker and arts educator in Adelaide, South Australia.[3][4] He has a Diploma of Teaching (Visual Art) from the South Australian School of Art (1966),[5] where he studied with Franz Kempf.[6] He also has a Bachelor of Education from the South Australian College of Advanced Education (now University of South Australia) (1982).[7]

From 1988 to 2005, he was Head of Education at the Art Gallery of South Australia and, since 2012, has lectured in art history at Adelaide Central School of Art.[8] He became the inaugural art critic of The Adelaide Review in 1985 and continues to write for it.[9][10]

He has curated exhibitions for the Adelaide Central School of Art,[11] Flinders University Art Museum,[12] Murray Bridge Regional Gallery,[13][14] and Carrick Hill.[15]

Neylon is an author who has written several books on Australian and South Australian artists including Robert Hannaford, Hans Heysen (co-authored with Jane Hylton), Greg Johns, Franz Kempf, Stephen Bowers (co-authored with Damon Moon) and Aldo Iacobelli, as well as contributing catalogue essays for many exhibitions. Neylon has also been on the judging panel for the Whyalla Art Prize (2011),[16][17] and the Waterhouse Natural History Art Prize (2006).[18][19]

Neylon has been described as one of Adelaide's longest-established art critics[20] and as "penning well-considered, witty, vastly knowledgeable judgments on hundreds of exhibitions a year with sustained panache".[21]

In 2005, Neylon was awarded the Minister's Award for Excellence in Arts Education by the South Australian Department of Education.[22] In 2014, he was the inaugural winner of the Lorne Sculpture Biennale Scarlett Award for critical writing.[23]