John Lundberg
John Lundberg (born December 5, 1968) is an English artist and documentary filmmaker. In the early 1990s he founded circlemakers, a UK based arts collective famous for covertly creating hundreds of the world's largest and most elaborate crop circles.[1]
He was born in London and studied fine art and interactive design at Middlesex University (1988–1991), the Slade School of Fine Art (1991–1992) and the University of Westminster (1996–1997) during which time he also worked with the Turner Prize nominated artists Langlands and Bell.[2] Before abandoning exhibiting in galleries to work out in the fields he exhibited his artworks in several galleries including a one person show called Infinity Focus at the Max Wigram gallery in London which was curated by Gavin Turk one of the Young British Artists (YBAs) and in the group shows A Fete Worse than Death and The Hanging Picnic alongside Tracey Emin, Gillian Wearing, Gavin Turk, Gilbert & George, Sarah Lucas and Damien Hirst at Joshua Compston's Hoxton gallery Factual Nonsense. In 1993 after he had stopped exhibiting in galleries the art collector Charles Saatchi offered to buy one of his anonymously created crop circles and exhibit it at the Saatchi Gallery in London. His offer was declined on the basis that to function correctly as artworks the crop circles need to remain authorless.[3]
In 1995 Lundberg created the circlemakers.org[4] website to document his group's activities. The site which averages one million page views a month is the only site of its kind on the Internet, and consists of over 250 pages of information about crop circle making. The site has received several awards, including The Guardian Site of the Year and a Yell UK Web award, as well as numerous favorable reviews in the media.[5]
The circles he and his collaborators - including Rod Dickinson, Gavin Turk, Simon Bill, Wil Russell and Rob Irving - crafted anonymously gained notoriety and created headlines around the world. Eventually Lundberg began to be approached by companies asking him if they could create crop circles to be used in TV shows, music videos, movies, adverts and PR stunts.[6] Clients to date have included, Korn, QI, Hovis, British Sky Broadcasting, Nippon TV, Disney, Bacardi, BP, Scope, Royal Bank of Scotland, National Geographic Channel, Red Bull, Microsoft, Greenpeace, Nike, AMD, Shredded Wheat, Hello Kitty, Pepsi, Weetabix, BBC, The Sun, Mitsubishi, O2, Big Brother, NBC, Orange Mobile, History Channel and the Discovery Channel.[7]
He has been accused of being involved in the creation of the notorious alien autopsy video released in 1995 by businessman Ray Santilli which purported to show the autopsy of an alien creature that was recovered from a crashed flying saucer that landed in Roswell, New Mexico in 1948.[8]
There's a chapter about Lundberg and his collaborators in Iain Aitch's book A Fete Worse Than Death ISBN 0-7553-1191-4. 2006 saw the publication of the book The Field Guide: The Art, History and Philosophy of Crop Circle Making ISBN 0-9548054-2-9 which was co-written with circlemaker Rob Irving. Henry Hemming's book In Search of the English Eccentric ISBN 0719522129 was published in 2008 and includes a chapter about Lundberg and his crop circle making cohorts.
He graduated from the documentary directing MA at the National Film and Television School in 2004 and his award winning short film The Mythologist[9] about a latter-day Walter Mitty character was broadcast on the BBC the same year. He is currently making his first feature length documentary Mirage Men,[10] about US military disinformation. Mark Pilkington's book about the project - also called Mirage Men ISBN 1845298578 - was published in July 2010, by Constable & Robinson.[11] Lundberg was featured in the Discovery Channel's series Monster Garage as a part of a build team slated with the task of creating a mechanical crop-circle maker out of a tractor.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Hemming, Henry (2009) In Search of the English Eccentric John Murray ISBN 0719522129
- ^ Off Kilter
- ^ Off Kilter
- ^ Circlemakers
- ^ Circlemakers
- ^ Hemming, Henry (2009) In Search of the English Eccentric John Murray ISBN 0719522129
- ^ Circlemakers
- ^ Flying Saucer Review
- ^ The Mythologist
- ^ Mirage Men
- ^ Off Kilter
[edit] External links
- circlemakers.org Circlemakers arts collective website.
