Draft:Gary Wragg

Gary Wragg (born 18 December 1946 in High Wycombe) is a contemporary British abstract artist, and a prominent exponent and instructor of the Chinese martial art of Tai Chi Ch'uan.

Art Career
Wragg attended the School of Art in High Wycombe 1962-66 before he moved to London, studying at Camberwell School of Art 1966-69, and Slade School of Fine Art 1969-71. After visiting Jack Tworkov in 1971, Wragg's relationship with American art intensified. He was awarded the Boise Travelling Scholarship (USA & Mexico) in 1972, going on to visit Willem de Kooning in New York in 1985. He showed in British Painting 1974 at the Hayward Gallery in London in 1974 and British Painting 1952-77 at the Royal Academy, London in 1977. His first one-man show, at the Acme Gallery, London in 1979 won favourable reviews, including The Observer, New Statesman , ArtReview , Harpers and Queen and Evening News. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s he showed regularly at Nicola Jacobs Gallery, and Flowers, both in London. In 1983 Art Critic Sarah Kent wrote of Wragg's work in Time Out: ''Gary Wragg’s huge terra cotta canvases stand out. Sketchy areas of black, white and grey create ambiguously transparent readings of space while chalk and paint lines suggest diagrammatic representations - perhaps of Tai Chi movements''. In 1990 he became a member of The London Group of artists. More recent solo exhibitions of his work were held at the London galleries Clifford Chance, Alan Wheatley Art, The Nine British Art, and a solo retrospective Motion & Stillness 1963-2018 at the Lanchester Research Gallery, Coventry, in 2019. Gary Wragg's work has been offered at auction multiple times, including "Chi V" (Blue, Yellow, Red, Grey), sold at Sotheby's in 2005. In 2023 his painting Chien 1 was used an an example of Abstract Expressionism in The Guardian in an article comparing art generated by Artificial Intelligence with that of "important artists".

His work is held in major public collections including the Arts Council of Great Britain, the South African National Gallery, the Pompidou Centre in Paris and the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.



Tai Chi Career


Wragg first encountered Tai Chi Ch'uan while teaching at Camberwell School of Art in 1973, being invited by his students to observe their class with Gerda Geddes. From her he learned the Yang style of Choy Hawk Peng, and began to relate the square and round movements of the ‘Form’ to the lines and shapes of his own paintings. Wragg later studied with John Kells, who taught the Cheng Man-Ching style. From Kells he received a basic introduction to the martial aspect of Tai Chi Ch'uan. In 1979 he attended a class in the Wu style given by the Malaysian instructor ‘Simon’ Seow Poon Shing, and felt that this was the right style for him. After a few years of practice in London, he went to train at Seow’s home in Malaysia, with Seow’s father, a senior disciple of Cheng Wing Kwong, and with Master Ong. In 1981 Seow Poon Shing returned to Malaysia, and Wragg took over the running of the London Centre of Wu Style Tai Chi Chuan. In 1985 Seow introduced him to Sifu Wu Kwong Yu, the great-grandson of Wu Chien Chuan, based in Toronto. In 1989 Wragg’s London Centre became the first Academy in Europe of the International Wu Style Tai Chi Chuan Federation. Gary Wragg is a senior disciple of Grandmaster Wu Kwong Yu, the 5th Generation head of the lineage, and is the Chief Instructor of the Wu Family style in Europe. In 1991 Wragg co-founded the Tai Chi Union for Great Britain (TCUGB), and served twice as Chairman and for 30 years on its technical panel. He was a keen competitor both in solo Form demonstration and in Pushing Hands, and was Canadian Push Hands Champion in 1991 and 1993, and Silver medallist in Push Hands, Hand Form, Straight Sword, and Sabre at the 1998 Pan American Martial Arts Tournament in Toronto. He also won medals at the European Championships in St. Petersburg and in the 2006 World Championships in Zhengzhou, China.

With the support of the TCUGB, in 2005 he introduced a Judging Seminars programme to train officials to recognise the essential features of all the major styles. Since 2008 this has been running alongside the annual London Competition for Traditional Tai Chi Chuan, the largest open competition of its kind in the UK.

In 2020 Wragg co-founded the International Taiji & Qigong Federation (ITQF) and serves as the organisation's first chairman. In the same year he released an extensive instructional DVD: Tai Chi for Beginners with Gary Wragg

Sifu Gary Wragg lives in London and continues to teach students at Wu’s Tai Chi Chuan Academy, Bethnal Green, London.