At Goldsmiths College in 1968, Grylls produced an exhibition of his first photographically-based pun-sculptures, each made from cardboard and called collectively 'Ludwig Wittgenstein's Palace of Pun.' He took this with him to the Slade School of Fine Art and continued to make more pun-sculptures. His work was noticed at his final show at the Slade in 1970 by Jasia Reichardt, art critic and assistant director of the ICA. His first London exhibition was held at the ICA in October 1970 as one room in an exhibition entitled 'Ten Sitting Rooms.' Grylls' pun-sculpture work was also shown at an alternative exhibition space called The Gallery. The Gallery was opened in Lisson St, London in 1972 by fellow Slade graduate Nicholas Wegner. Wegner invited Grylls to show at The Gallery. The work Grylls exhibited in 1973 entitled 'An Indo-Chinese Punsculpture' was a large photo-mural commenting on the signing of the so-called Paris Peace Treaty. Wegner and Grylls then collaborated in an artistic partnership, inspired in part by Andy Warhol, from 1973 to 1975. Wegner closed The Gallery in 1978.
Photography
Grylls' father died in 1977, and Grylls' style and focus changed thereafter. His style developed into works largely inspired by international news and political events. He used photographic montage techniques to create a collection of images pinned together to produce one large image. In 1977 he travelled to Istanbul and used a telephoto lens to produce his first panoramic photo-collage, Hagia Sophia, Istanbul. It was exhibited in 1978 at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London. His next photo-collage exhibition was in 1979 called The Wailing Wall, Jerusalem and In Flanders Fields. Grylls said that his overtly political art tried, in the case of The Wailing Wall, Jerusalem, to "examine a cultural and religious icon that has had a far-reaching influence on political events today." In 1980, Grylls created panoramic collages of the sites where President John F. Kennedy on Elm Street and Lord Mountbatten in Donegal Bay were murdered. William Feaver of The Observer referred to Grylls’ work as "mixed-media surveys, combining epic scale and humdrum particulars." In 1984, Grylls' 'Britain Through the Looking Glass', a twenty-eight by eight foot work of colour Xerox photographs that were taken at the British Museum in London in the "Egyptian Mummy room" was exhibited at the Atlantis Gallery in London. Also, in the same exhibition, were two equally large panoramas, one based on the Greenwich Meridian, the other on Wembley Stadium.
Education
In 1984, Grylls was appointed professor of photography and video at Williams College, Massachusetts. In 1989 Grylls returned to England to become Head of Art & Design at Wolverhampton Polytechnic and in 1996 he became director of the Kent Institute of Art & Design. In 2003, Grylls proposed creating a new university of 6000+ students studying art, design, and architecture by merging the Kent Institute with the Surrey Institute of Art & Design to prevent these free-standing art colleges becoming absorbed into their local universities. The merged institution was called the University College for the Creative Arts at Canterbury, Epsom, Farnham, Maidstone & Rochester. Grylls as founding Chief Executive of the merged institution resigned soon afterwards, announcing that he intended to return full-time to his own work. In 2014, Grylls published his art school autobiography entitled "I Brought This In Case: The 1960s, Four Art Schools and Me" with a Foreword by Sir Christopher Frayling, the popular culture critic and former Rector of the Royal College of Art. In 2018, Bitter Lemon Press published Grylls' second autobiographical book, "Have You Come Far? A Life in Interviews".
