The Leverhulme Research Fellowship was awarded to John for his project: 'The Skull Cracker Suite: An Inter-disciplinary Artistic Research Project'.

Drawing on the mythology, dances and art of the Kwakwaka'wakw peoples of British Columbia and the writings of Brazilian ethnologist Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, The Skullcracker Suite is an inter-disciplinary and cross-cultural artistic research project that asks how contemporary art might advance the project of a “permanent de-colonization of thought”. It will begin with a one-month residency at the Dynamo Arts Association space in Vancouver, British Columbia in August 2016. The gallery will be set up as a ‘Special Investigations Bureau’ hosting seminars, talks and screenings on the subject. The findings of the investigations will form the basis for an ongoing exhibition in the space. Throughout the duration of the 18 month project I will also be working on a complementary film project that, using the conceit of the artist as a ‘special agent’, takes the story of the science-fiction writer Philip K. Dick’s brief time in Vancouver in 1972 - where he spent time in a rehab center for First Nations drug users and ex-cons called X-Kalay - as a starting point to explore the topic of decolonisation in film form. The project will culminate in the production and curation of a body of artworks and texts for exhibition, performance and publication in 2017-18.