chris bracey

chris bracey

Chris Bracey is the British artist and designer whose Gods Own Junkyard housed one of the largest collections of neon signs outside the US. Bradley, 59 years old, was recently diagnosed with prostate cancer, he passed away last Tuesday, November 4th 2014. According to BBC News, a message on his Twitter account on Tuesday read “Just wanna let you know I am actually in Gods Own Junk Yard,”.

Bradley, a graphic designer was influenced by the West End’s burgeoning sex industry and helped shape London’s Soho with his powerful, sexy, provoking signage. “I did 99 percent of every sex establishment in Soho for 20 years,” he told the BBC last year. “For me, it was an artistic endeavour.” His work included catwalk and in-store displays for some of the UK’s biggest labels and department stores as well as movie backdrops for Neil Jordan’s 1986 film Mona Lisa, Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut, and four Batman films.

He kept the backdrops from those films, discarded shop signs, religious statues and many other items at Gods Own Junkyard in Walthamstow, http://godsownjunkyard.co.uk/gallery.html

Check out his solo exhibition, I’ve Looked Up to Heaven and Been Down to Hell, in London last year.

Admirable.