Artists

Michael Lyons (b. 1943)

Michael Lyons was born in the heart of the industrial Midlands in Bilston, Staffordshire, and he studied at Wolverhampton College of Art (1959-63), Hornsey College of Art, London (1963-64), and the University of Newcastle upon Tyne (1964-67).

Lyons' early work clearly reflects this industrial heritage. He has always been fascinated by the proximity of industry to rural landscape, and his work refers as much to the organic as it does to the mechanical. Since the mid-nineties he has increased the range of materials which make up his sculptural vocabulary but steel remains his primary material.

Until 1992 Lyons was Head of Sculpture at Manchester Metropolitan University and between 1994-97 he was Vice President of the Royal British Society of Sculptors. He was a founding member of the Yorkshire Sculpture Park where, in 1998, a twenty-year survey exhibition of his sculpture and drawings was held.

In 2003-4 Lyons held a solo exhibition entitled, Under Heaven: A Chinese Odyssey at the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester. In 2003 he won the Yuzi Prize at the first Guilin Yuzi Paradise International Sculpture Awards in China and in 2003 and 2005 he took part in the first and second Beijing International Art Biennales. At the 2006 Chaco Sculpture Biennale, Resistencia, Argentina Lyons won the 'Premio Fondo Nacional de las Artes'. He has carried out many large-scale public commissions and his works are held in private and public collections in the U.K. and elsewhere in Europe, the U.S.A., China and Canada. Lyons lives and works in Yorkshire.

Select Bibliography

G. Portelli, Modern British Sculpture, London, 2005.
Exhibition catalogue, Under Heaven: A Chinese Odyssey, Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, 2003.
M. Lyons, Sculpture and Drawings, Pickled Arts Centre, Beijing, 2002.
Exhibition catalogue, Michael Lyons, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, 1998.
P. Murray, 'Interview with Mike Lyons', Aspects, no. 22, Spring 1983.