Ian Breakwell

Who was Ian Breakwell?

Ian Breakwell was a world renowned British fine artist. He was a prolific artist who took a multi-media approach to his observation of society. Breakwell was born in Derby and studied at Derby College of Art, graduating in 1964.

During the 1970s Breakwell worked with the Artist Placement Group, which dropped artists into government departments in the perhaps forlorn hope that their intuition would improve the decision-making process. Breakwell's placements included the Department of Health and Social Security; under its auspices, he worked in Broadmoor and Rampton hospitals. The results included a report, co-written with a group of architects, recommending top-to-bottom changes at Rampton, and a film, The Institution, made with the singer-songwriter and artist Kevin Coyne. A diary entry recalls Breakwell's first APG visit to Rampton, which immediately stirred memories of performing there as a child-conjuror: the incongruous juxtaposition is entirely characteristic.

In 1986 Pluto Press published Ian Breakwell's Diary 1964-1985, his idiosyncratic journal, observing fine details of modern society typically overlooked by most people. In the 1980s, he made a number of adaptations of his diary for Channel 4. Later he co-edited two important anthologies, akin to the work of Mass Observation: Seeing in the Dark, an assemblage of hundreds of accounts of cinema-going; and Brought to Book, which documented the myriad forms of bibliophiliac obsession. Although he had a longstanding relationship with the Anthony Reynolds Gallery in London, his keenness to develop new ways of working led to residencies with, among others, Tyne Tees Television and Durham Cathedral.