Cult singer and lyricist, artist and teacher, born in Upminster, Essex. Aged seven he contracted polio, leaving him with a bad limp and a caliper. Dury attended grammar school in High Wycombe and the painting school at the Royal College of Art, 1963–6. A close friend was the painter Geoff Rigden, mutual interests including jazz, button-down collar shirts, gangster movies and pinball. Whereas Rigden became a colourful abstractionist, Dury adhered to objective figuration. In 1967, Dury had a solo show at the ICA, featuring pin-ups and gangsters. After Rigden took a part-time teaching job at Canterbury College of Art in 1970 he recommended Dury to the head, Thomas Watt. When Dury began teaching there he was starting to collaborate with the pianist Russell Hardy, composing songs eventually performed under the band name Kilburn and the High Roads.
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Dury’s concentration on gigs and failing to turn up for teaching led to his sacking from Canterbury. When his original band broke up the remnants formed a new line-up, the Blockheads, and in 1975 they were signed up by Stiff Records. The group’s debut New Boots and Panties received superlative reviews and spent over a year in the United Kingdom albums chart. In 1979, Dury’s number Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick topped the charts. Dury continued to make thoughtful, witty and polemic records in the 1980s; in 1989 had success with the musical Apples, with another former Blockheads member, Mickey Gallagher; in the 1990s hosted the late-night television programme Metro; and continued to tour. After being diagnosed with terminal cancer, in 1998 Dury reunited with the Blockheads for the well-received Mr Love Pants. He latterly lived in Hampstead, north London. The earliest manifestation of the Kilburns included the artists Chris and Keith Lucas, Paul Tonkin and Humphrey Ocean. They were included in the homage exhibition Canterbury Kilburns, “friends from Ian Dury’s days at Canterbury College of Art”, held at deliArt in 2003.
Text source: 'Artists in Britain Since 1945' by David Buckman (Art Dictionaries Ltd, part of Sansom & Company)
