Sculptor, performance artist and lecturer, born in London. Gray’s early death, the dismantling of many works and a move overseas did not help the reputation of this highly original artist who spurned that designation, preferring to be called a “communications engineer”. Gray obtained his National Diploma in Civil Engineering, Southend-on-Sea Municipal College, 1964, and worked at marine surveying when he began to draw and paint. He graduated in art from Brighton Polytechnic, 1973, gaining his master’s in sculpture from the Royal College of Art, 1976. From 1970 Gray began to incorporate electronic components into his paintings. For his first solo show, at Zarach in 1972, he showed electro-sculpture, which he continued to produce until late in his career.
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Gray won an Arts Council Major Award, 1978. By then he had achieved several dozen solo shows in Britain and on the continent. In 1980 he moved to America to teach art in Tennessee, in 1981 gaining his master’s degree in communication at Memphis State University. He then went to Anchorage, Alaska, where he became associate professor of art at the University, in 1985 gained a fellowship from Alaska State Council on the Arts and eventually died. Gray’s work went through phases, some following others, some overlapping. There was a telecommunications phase, house phase, political phase, performance art phase and late ritual phase. Gray’s art was meant to be handled, like Three Thousand Volt Money Box, 1979, at Ferens Art Gallery, Hull, which continued to raise money for the collection. Gray’s numerous one-man exhibitions latterly included Lowestoft Arts Centre, Kenai Peninsula College and Private Enquiries Gallery, Anchorage, all 1991, and Anchorage Museum of History and Art, 1993. He rejected the idea of “making art that flaunts itself like an ageing whore. I don’t want people to walk in the door, drink a glass of wine, mingle with their friends, leave and say they’ve seen the Ken Gray exhibition. I want them to give the work some attention.” Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne; Yorkshire Sculpture Park; Arnolfini, Bristol; Aberdeen and Southampton City Art Galleries; and collections in America, Germany and Switzerland hold examples.
Text source: 'Artists in Britain Since 1945' by David Buckman (Art Dictionaries Ltd, part of Sansom & Company)
