St Helens born Pilkington is a real football fan, with his art studio draped with football shirts and his memories vivid of the impact on the game as football, music and fashion collided in the 1980s and a new, fresh, era came alive.
Pilkington attributes many of these changes to the impact it made on his life, as fan and artist.
“It encompasses a lot of my interests in one fell swoop,” he says.
“The (football) match is a place that crosses a lot of different social topics. Music, fashion, football & politics. It’s a belief system.
“You see how the scousers brought the Lacoste polos and Tacchini track tops back from European trips and how this influences the clothes you wear, the music you listen to.
“There’s a certain swagger about football culture that’s appealing. The confidence to bring back some track tops in the 80’s and tell everyone it’s cool.
“This energy encapsulated in a still image is what is interesting to me.”
Now living and working in Copenhagen, Pilkington has supported Liverpool his whole life. “Dad is the biggest red I know,” he says. “Home, away, Europe the lot his whole life. It’s ingrained.”
“The match is a place that crosses a lot of different social topics. Music, fashion, football & politics. It’s a belief system.”
Jon Pilkington
Robbie Fowler was a first idol for Pilkington and remains his all time favourite player. “Fowler embodied everything about being a scouser, supporting the dockers, the coke snorting celebration against Everton & the fact that he scored goals for fun,” he said.
“Scored all types of goals, proper poacher but the chip against Schmeichel in 95/96 at old Trafford epitomises his class.
“Steve Macmanaman has to be up there as well much along the lines of Robbie, proper scouser. Met them both at Melwood in 97, both class acts.”
Two goals from Macmanaman in a 2-1 away win at Newcastle in the bleak mid winter of 1997 is his stand out early memory.
“Wasn’t my first game but remember this really distinctly,” he said.
“It was just after Christmas, going up there with my old man, first away day (at that time Newcastle seemed a long way from Liverpool) proper trip, it was absolutely baltic up there but what a buzz.”
“There’s a certain swagger about football culture.”
Jon Pilkington
His father’s devotion to Liverpool obviously plays a decisive role in his own support for the club. He recalls: “Seeing my dad devote his life to Liverpool, away for European trips coming back with shirts, hats and pennants for me and my brother, and looking for him on the tele at the likes of Strasbourg away in the Europa League.”
Pilkington the artist has found a wealth of inspiration in the traditions of the game that give his work such a unique feel.
“The paintings are born using the history of football as the infrastructure,” he explained.
“Focusing on the historical side of the game I began to look in to players of Preston North End and the early years of the FA Cup. My paintings are usually rooted in historical references and motifs, so the ‘football’ paintings follow suit in that way.
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“I see them acting as a vehicle to transport us back to the roots and the chaos of the early days in football.
“Using solely black and white imagery as a basis these paintings are imbued with synthetic and saturated colours, yet still hark back to an era of old leather caseys, heavy woollen shirts, long studs and smart side partings.
“For me as a painter it’s much more interesting to try to create an atmosphere around something that once was and bring that back to life. The paintings contain both figurative and abstract references to football, be that goal keepers picking a ball out the air or a player doing keepy ups with silhouettes of the old standing terraces behind.”
“For me as a painter it’s much more interesting to try to create an atmosphere around something that once was and bring that back to life.”
Jon Pilkington
It was while studying for a BA at Preston that Pilkington first started dabbling in photography, visiting a local market to buy old film cameras and expired film.
“I never took photos in a serious sense at that time, it was always in a way of having fun and seeing how off or awkward something could look or the excitement of whether the film was going to develop,” he recalled.
“Now I use photography as a side to painting. Painting is my bread and butter, photography I can have fun with.
“Theres a directness to taking photos, there is an honesty, a portrayal or depiction of something that you can twist or distort but can’t necessarily hide from.
“Football gets a hard knock in many aspects, often deemed as lowbrow laddism. Football is a place of coming together in many ways.”
Jon Pilkington
“I like the stillness of photography, as a painter there is a lot of chaos in my work. It’s nice to break from this and create something that exists in a completely different context.”
Pilkington the fan is often frustrated by football’s reputation.
“I think football gets a hard knock in many aspects, often deemed as lowbrow laddism,” he said.
“Football is a place of coming together in many ways. It’s an entry point or conversation starter. From my perspective as a working class lad from up north it’s everything.
“Weeks dwindled away waiting for the weekend, ready to don your best gear. Football and music has always gone hand in hand hasn’t it? Must have something to do with Bob Mortimer and Chris Rea & lighting up the world with Let’s Dance…”
The memories are coming thick and fast.
He continues: “Footy kits and training gear and boots have always been massive from watching Football Italia on Channel 4 as a kid and seeing those incredible Fiorentina kits in the Batistuta days, to Craig Johnstone and the invention Preds (Adidas Predators).
“Always the debate between Preds and the R9 (Nike R9 Mercurial football boots), as a goalie it was hard to get away with. You’d stick with the unbeatable Adidas World Cups.
“A good bit of training gear has always been a staple for knocking round the house in or nipping down the bottom shops.”
Pilkington, football fan, artist and photographer, has literally turned his love of the game into an art form.
Jon’s latest project ‘Oswald My Boy’ is currently on show at the Keteleer Gallery in Belgium.