Background and Education
1953 Apprentice Stonemason
1954-57 Kingston School of Art
1963 Moved to St Ives, Cornwall
1964-66 Worked at the Leach Pottery and made first wooden sculptures
1966 Worked with Breon O’Casey making jewellery
1968-1982 Partnership with Breon O’Casey
1978 Set up forge and made first iron sculptures
1986 Moved to London
Selected Exhibitions (*denotes solo exhibition)
1964/76 Penwith Gallery, St Ives
1965 British Crafts Centre, London
1969/72 Marjory Parr, St Ives and London
1971 Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol
1972/73 New Craftsmen, St Ives
1981 O’Casey’s Craft Gallery, London
1981 Oxford Gallery, Oxford
1982 ‘The Maker’s Eye’, Crafts Council, London
Crafts Council Sideshow, ICA, London
1983 British Crafts Centre, London ‘ works in wood
Crafts Centre and Design Gallery, Leeds City Art Gallery, Leeds
Oxford Gallery, Oxford ‘ Paintings, with ceramics by Alison Britton
1984 ‘Bryan Illsley: Work in wood, metal and paint’,
Crafts Council, London*
West Bretton Sculpture Park, Wakefield ‘ works in iron
1986 ‘Craft Matters’, John Hansard Gallery, Southampton University,
a Southern Arts touring exhibition
1988 ‘Souvenirs from St Ives’, Contemporary Applied Arts, London*
‘Contemporary British Crafts’, Crafts Council exhibition touring
National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo and National Museum
of Modern Art Kyoto, Japan
1989 ‘Common Ground – Out of the Wood’, Crafts Council, London
‘Clay Bodies’, Contemporary Applied Arts, London
1990/91 Two works for Chiltern Sculpture Trail, Oxford Residency*
1990 ‘Recent Works’, Jamison Thomas Gallery, Portland, Oregon USA*
1992 ‘Sculptures & Paintings’, Cirencester Workshop Gallery*
1993 Sculpture Aspen, residency, Aspen Art Museum, Colorado USA
1993-95 The Raw and The Cooked’, group exhibition of contemporary
ceramics, Museum of Modern Art Oxford, followed by a tour
1995 ‘Pandora’s Box’, group ceramic exhibition, Crafts Council, London
1998 Inaugural exhibition, Barrett Marsden Gallery, London
1999 Joint show, Illsely Paintings and Robert Marsden Metalwork,
Barrett Marsden Gallery, London
Todd Gallery, London – paintings
2004 Group exhibition, Barrett Marsden Gallery,
London ‘ Illsley Ceramics
2008 ‘Bryan Illsley: New Prints and Recent Paintings’,
Cross Street Gallery, London*
‘The work of Bryan Illsley’, selected by Stella Benjamin, The Anthony Shaw Collection, London
2009 ‘Selected Works’, Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, Swansea*
2010 ‘Partings and Pipelines’ Marsden Woo Gallery, London*
2011 Lemon Street Gallery, Truro
Public Collections
Contemporary Art Society, London
Kettles Yard, Cambridge
Plymouth City Art Gallery
Camden, Cornwall, Devon and Reading Education Committees
Arts Council of Great Britain
Portsmouth City Museum
Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto
Crafts Council of Great Britain
Victoria and Albert Museum
Smart Museum, University of Chicago
Selected bibliography
Christopher Reid, Crafts Council, 1984
Edward Lucie-Smith, ‘Sculpture Since 1945’, Phaidon, 1987
Alison Britton, ‘Souvenirs from St Ives’, Contemporary Applied Arts, 1988
Lord Gowrie, ‘Bryan Illsley’, Barrett Marsden Gallery, 1999
‘Partings and Pipelines’, Marsden Woo Gallery, 2010
