David Gwinnutt

David Gwinnutt, born in 1961, is a British artist, designer and gay activist who came to prominence in the 1980s when he started to take intimate black and white photographic portraits of subjects drawn from London’s art world and queer scene. His subjects from that time, whose portraits were never staged, include Leigh Bowery, Quentin Crisp, Gilbert & George, Maggi Hambling, and Derek Jarman.

In 2000 Gwinnutt created the ‘Pink Jack’, a flag that recasts the Union Jack in pink and that the artist first launched at Europride 2006. Gwinnutt has explained: “I created the Pink Jack as an expression of my pride in being gay and British and in recognition of the acceptance I found in Britain, starting as a school kid in Matlock, Derbyshire. It made me think that Britain is actually cool about gay people and I wanted to celebrate that”.  The Pink Jack can be seen as having become synonymous with the period in the early 2000’s when, as Gwinnutt optimistically describes, Britain was “starting to acknowledge the contribution of gay people, equality was on the agenda, human rights were improving and civil partnerships had become legal”.

Gwinnutt’s current photography continues to document LGBTQI+ cultural icons such as Steven Appleby, Alan Cumming, Tom Rasmussen, Marc Ravenhill and Peter Tatchell. He also creates landscapes and still-lives presented in high-saturation, colour-enhanced technicolour, sometimes embellished with hand-painted designs.

A solo exhibition of David Gwinnutt’s work was held at the National Portrait Gallery in 2017, celebrating the gallery’s acquisition of Gwinnutt’s work, and 50 years since the decriminalisation of homosexuality in the UK.  The artist’s work is also part of many other public and private collections, nationally and internationally, including The Royal Academy, London, The Currell Collection, and the National Portrait Gallery, Canberra, Australia.

David Gwinnutt lives and works in London.