Professor John Hyatt  

John Hyatt is a Manchester-based artist, musician, author and curator. In the late 1980s, he represented British Art as the featured selected artist of Arts Council of England’s “The British Art Show” and throughout his career has continued to exhibit nationally and internationally.

As well as being a respected figure as an artist, author, and musician, John has had a notable academic career. He was Head of the Department of Fine Arts at Manchester Metropolitan University from 1991 - 2002. At the time of receiving his personal Chair in 1993, John became one of the youngest Professors in the UK. He recently became the first Director of the new MMU Research Institute, MIRIAD (the Manchester Institute for Research and Innovation in Art and Design), officially founded at MMU in September 2003, and is also Head of the MIRIAD Graduate School of the Faculty of Art and Design.

In 1998, John was a Director of ISEA98, the Liverpool/Manchester International Symposium on Electronic Arts, which is still the UK’s biggest, global, new technology art event to date – a pioneering North West regional collaboration with Liverpool John Moore's University and FACT.

He has worked to develop the "art scene" of Manchester into the vibrant and active place it is today - most recently as a Director of CIDS (Cultural Industries Development Service) and as Chair of the Manchester Oxford Road Public Art Committee. He has advised both US research for the City of New York and European-commissioned research on how to develop the cultural infrastructure and profile of a city. His best-known Mancunian artwork is the much-photographed public sculpture, ‘Manchester’s Tilted Windmills’, in Exchange Square (shown on the MIRIAD Home page). Exchange Square (architect, Martha Schwartz) was profiled at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in January 2005 as one of the best twenty-three new urban designs in the world (reviewed, 'Groundswell', Architectural Review, NY Times, 24/02/05).

Hyatt is currently collaborating with Chinese critic and curator, Huang Zhuan on the curation of a major show of contemporary Chinese art, including new work by Wang Guangyi, due to be shown at Manchester Museum of Science and Industry in 2008.

John has always also been interested in sound - in the 1980s he was prominent as the lead singer with the recently-reformed, legendary band, 'The Three Johns'. As well as the Johns, he is currently collaborating with musicians from Xiamen, China; The Suns of Potto; and producing solo work.

John Hyatt continues to have an eclectic and trans-disciplinary creative career: he has a long history of international exhibitions and performances as a painter, designer, musician, printmaker, author, video artist, and sculptor.