John Humphreys

b. 1955

Born in Salford, John Humphreys studied sculpture at Cheltenham and Gloucester College and the Royal Academy of Art. Since leaving the Royal Academy he has worked extensively in film and television, uniting his fine art training with special effects.

Humphreys most controversial work was featured in the 1996 hoax film Alien Autopsy, a film about the grainy black and white footage that supposedly showed a dead alien being dissected by American government scientists after a UFO crash. Humphries was a consultant on the film, and made the models for the unfortunate alien.

Humphreys’ modelling work has also led to him work for blockbuster films such as Alexander, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and for a number of TV series including Doctor Who.

Not content with exploiting his self evident skills at verisimilitude, Humphreys began to look at his subjects with distorting eyes, making objects that are literally mind-bending. When looking at his work the brain constantly tries to recorrect the distortion to a perceived reality - the result is to look at personality and appearance via our external features in a totally fresh and exciting way.

Humphries has exhibited extensively, with exhibitions at The Nicholas Treawell Gallery, Yorkshire, The Museum of the Moving Image, The Royal Academy of Arts, and Basel and Miami Art Fairs. He has had a number of high profile commissions, including a bust profile of Mick Fleetwood at the Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition in 2001 and at the 2008 Summer Exhibition he gained much exposure for the work featured opposite.