Biography
Working together since 1993, multidisciplinary artist duo Jon Thomson and Alison Craighead produce art across video, sound, sculpture, installation and the virtual sphere. Much of their work explores and questions the effect of technology on daily life, including modern communication and societal fragmentation.
Thomson & Craighead’s work has been featured in numerous solo exhibitions, including The Academy of Saturn, Cooley Gallery, Portland, US (2018); Wake me up when it’s over, Young Projects Gallery, Los Angeles (2017); Party Booby Trap, Carroll / Fletcher Gallery, London (2016); Maps DNA and Spam, Dundee Contemporary Arts, UK (2014); and Not even the sky, MEWO Kunsthalle, Memmingen, Germany (2013). Among their group exhibitions are I Was Raised on the Internet, MCA, Chicago (2018); Anytime Now, Tent, Rotterdam (2018); Lifetime, MU, Eindhoven, the Netherlands (2018); Electronic Superhighway, MAAT, Lisbon (2017); Recruitment Gone Wrong, The New Observatory, FACT, Liverpool (2017); Glut, Holden Gallery, Manchester (2017); and Tecnologies de la violència, Arts Santa Monica, Barcelona (2016).
Their work can be found in the collections of the Robeco Collection, Rotterdam; Bristol Museum and Art Gallery, UK; Alain Servais family collection, Brussels; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; National Science and Media Museum in Bradford, UK; Harris Museum, Preston, UK; and Museum of London.
The artists were part of the Stephen E. Ostrow Distinguished Visitors Program in the Visual Arts, Reed College, Portland, US (2018). They were also selected to present their work at in the exhibition Current, organised by folly and the Harris Museum, Preston (2011), and they received the Vital Spark Award from Creative Scotland (2011).
Thomson is a reader in fine art at the Slade School of Fine Art, London. Craighead is a reader in contemporary art and visual culture at the University of Westminster, London, and lectures in fine art at Goldsmiths, University of London. Both studied at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design, Dundee, UK.
Thomson was born in 1969 in London, and Craighead was born in 1971 in Aberdeen, UK. They both live and work in London.
SAF participation:
Art in the Age of Anxiety (2020)