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Cult singer and lyricist, artist and teacher, born in Upminster, Essex. Aged seven he contracted polio, leaving him with a bad limp and a caliper. Dury attended grammar school in High Wycombe and the painting school at the Royal College of Art, 1963–6. A close friend was the painter Geoff Rigden, mutual interests including jazz, button-down collar shirts, gangster movies and pinball. Whereas Rigden became a colourful abstractionist, Dury adhered to objective figuration. In 1967, Dury had a solo show at the ICA, featuring pin-ups and gangsters. After Rigden took a part-time teaching job at Canterbury College of Art in 1970 he recommended Dury to the head, Thomas Watt. When Dury began teaching there he was starting to collaborate with the pianist Russell Hardy, composing songs eventually performed under the band name Kilburn and the High Roads.

Text source: 'Artists in Britain Since 1945' by David Buckman (Art Dictionaries Ltd, part of Sansom & Company)


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