He was a North-Rhodesian-born British conceptual artist
Latham was educated at Winchester College
In the Second World War, he commanded a motor torpedo boat in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve
After the war, he studied art, first at the Regent Street Polytechnic and then at the Chelsea College of Art and Design
He married a fellow artist and collaborator Barbara Steveni in Westminster in 1951
The spray can become Latham’s primary medium, as can be seen in Man Caught Up with a Yellow Object (oil painting, 1954) in the Tate Gallery collection
In 2016 the Henry Moore Institute presented A Lesson in Sculpture with John Latham, an exhibition addressing Latham’s visionary contribution to the study of sculpture, bringing sixteen works by Latham, spanning 1958 to 2005, into conversation with sixteen sculptures by artists working across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries
In 2016 Pink Floyd released their collection of rare and unreleased recorded early material in the box set The Early Years 1965–1972
In 2017, Latham’s work featured in the main exhibition of the 57th Venice Biennale, Viva Arte Viva