Colin Yates

Over the past 20 years, I have combined my passion for art, sport, and education within my artistic practice. During this period, my artwork has been displayed in a series of prestigious solo exhibitions throughout the UK.
In July 2019, I was honoured to be shortlisted for the John Ruskin Drawing Prize with three portraits accepted into the ‘Agents of Change’ exhibition, a title that neatly summarises my work.

In March 2020, I was awarded an International Travel Bursary from the British Council to visit Cape Town in South Africa, with a two fold purpose. Firstly, to create a new body of artwork based upon the notorious prison on Robben Island and secondly to liaise with museums and change makers for future cultural partnerships between Coventry and Cape Town as part of the Coventry City of Culture Programme 2021.
I was also selected to work with five SEN schools in Coventry by the British Council and Coventry City of Culture on the acclaimed Rivers of the World

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Over the past 20 years, I have combined my passion for art, sport, and education within my artistic practice. During this period, my artwork has been displayed in a series of prestigious solo exhibitions throughout the UK.
In July 2019, I was honoured to be shortlisted for the John Ruskin Drawing Prize with three portraits accepted into the ‘Agents of Change’ exhibition, a title that neatly summarises my work.

In March 2020, I was awarded an International Travel Bursary from the British Council to visit Cape Town in South Africa, with a two fold purpose. Firstly, to create a new body of artwork based upon the notorious prison on Robben Island and secondly to liaise with museums and change makers for future cultural partnerships between Coventry and Cape Town as part of the Coventry City of Culture Programme 2021.
I was also selected to work with five SEN schools in Coventry by the British Council and Coventry City of Culture on the acclaimed Rivers of the World Project 2020/21

A longstanding project has been the creation of the ‘Black Looks’ anti­racist football exhibition, which through a series of fine­art portraits, traces over a century of Black and Asian footballers in Britain (Featured on Channel 4 and BBC 1). In 2018 ‘Black Looks’ celebrated its twentieth anniversary with an exhibition at The National Football Museum in Manchester. In 2003 I created a parallel scheme of work called ‘Moving the Goalposts’, tracing the history of women football.

I’m very proud to have worked with over 450 schools and community organisations using my artwork as a catalyst for change. To support my educational work, I have created portable exhibitions of the ‘Black Looks’ and ‘Moving the Goalposts’ projects. This has enabled me to display visual artwork combined with ‘hidden­histories’, in both traditional and unconventional spaces to new audiences.

A couple of additional high­points! During the millennium I won a ‘Year of the Artist Award’ enabling me to work as an artist in residence at Leicester City FC. In 2009 I was also the first visual artist to exhibit at The Public in West Bromwich. In 2019, I created the first exhibition dedicated to the groundbreaking gay footballer, Justin Fashanu, the work will be shown at Norwich Museum in 2021.
I work across a range of fine–art media including; painting, drawing, printmaking, and electronic graphics.

A full archive of my artwork, exhibitions, and projects can be found on my dedicated website Colin Yates art