Jay Jay Burridge studied fine art sculpture at Central Saint Martins College of Art where he acquired a name for himself creating artworks on a grand scale. Making a full size Airfix kit out of a real McLaren Formula 1 car was just the start and for his final degree show he made a 10 metre, slot together self assemble dinosaur skeleton out of MDF wood that stood above everything else.
After graduating in 1994, he took over from the legendary children’s TV presenter Tony Hart writing and co-presenting the TV show ‘SMart’ for the BBC. The following 8 years saw SMart grow in to three spin off television series, touring live shows, lines of merchandise and magazines and a whole lot of creativity driven by Jay and the team.
At the height of its popularity he decided the time had come to leave the show first turning his attention to a career in commercial art working alongside brands including Sony, Adidas and Levi’s. He also started up his own custom-made deluxe trucker cap brand, Lucky Seven Caps, which he eventually sold in 2018.
In the winter of 2009, Jay returned to creating large scale artwork, continuing where he left off with his favourite subject matter, dinosaurs. Taking everything he had learnt from his time in television and the commercial art world, he re-imagined the extinct creatures and brought them into our present world with humour and imagination. He exhibited his ‘Supersaurs’ sculptures in a one-man show in Beverly Hills, LA, in the summer of 2010. The enormous 8,000 square-foot space was filled with 15 full-sized Supersaurs posed in modern situations. Visitors were greeted by a full-size Tea Rex (drinking a cup of tea), a cowboy riding a Triceratops, and a rock band called ‘The Raptors in full performance mode and smashing up their musical equipment. There were also neon signs depicting Supersaur ‘Exotic Dancers’, a hot dog stand selling ‘hot diplodogs’, and limited edition Adidas branded ‘trainersaurs’.
In 2012 back in London he co-created the pop up Dinersaur Diner with his friend Jamie Oliver, situated in the heart of Piccadilly Circus. The concept restaurant became so popular it stayed popped up for almost seven years. Over this period Jay started to develop the characters and stories behind the artworks and created the fictional World of Supersaurs, a world where dinosaurs never died out and humans evolved alongside them.
What started out as a series of short unconnected stories written to entertain his own children, turned into a major 6 book international publishing deal with Bonnier Books. The fact that Jay is dyslexic has also led him to give many inspirational lectures to school children on how to work around life problems and be more creative.
For more information on Jay please do not visit the Wikipedia page; he did not invent snowboarding…