John Buckley

Who is John Buckley?

John Buckley is an English sculptor whose best known work is the sculpture "Untitled 1986", better known as "the Shark House" or "The Headington Shark" in Headington, a suburb of Oxford.

Buckley went to sculpture classes in the evenings when studying for his O-levels in a technical college. He went on to Winchester School of Art and Leicester College of Art, and thereafter worked as a lorry driver and labourer while getting his career as sculptor off the ground.

In 1976, his friend Bill Heine invited Buckley to design the sculptural fixtures on the Penultimate Picture Palace. For the facade Buckley chose a dramatic figure reminiscent of Al Jolson with outstretched hands. Mae West's lips were the inspiration for the cinema's door handles and, somewhat later Buckley would erect a male and a female figure above the toilet entrances, whimsically named Pearl and Dean.

In 1978, a work of his was exhibited by Nicholas Treadwell at the Washington Art Fair, and he stayed with Treadwell for some time thereafter.

The "Headington Shark" was erected on the 41st anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Nagasaki.