A walk and talk with artist Simon Roberts whose Thames Tideway Tunnel hoarding commission The Thames Wunderkammer: Tales from Victoria Embankment in Two Parts is currently on show at Victoria Embankment.
Participants are invited to gather outside Embankment Underground Station (River Thames exit) where the artist will meet you and take you on a short walk to the site of the hoarding. There, he will discuss his 25-metre ‘cabinet of curiosities’ that presents a fascinating and diverse collection of objects from the past and present. Ancient swords, photographs from the women’s pro-suffrage march and comical engarvings of the dirty water of the Thames contribute to an artwork that reflects the area’s complex history, geology and devleopment.
Simon Roberts’ commission draws on exciting research with the Museum of London, British Museum, Houses of Parliament, Parliamentary Archives, Parliamentary Art Collection, Wellcome Trust, and Thames 21; and Flowers Gallery London.
The event is free and can be booked here: TICKETS
This event is part of Totally Thames, which takes place over the month of September and brings the river to life via an exciting season of arts, cultural and river events throughout the 42-mile stretch of the Thames in London.
More information about Tideway’s arts programme is available here: https://www.tideway.london/news/media-centre/tideway-launches-vision-for-public-art-to-celebrate-history-and-culture-of-the-river-thames/
My photograph ‘Abandoned Warship in the Kola Bay, Murmansk, Russia, 2005’ from Motherland is included in the book 1001 Photographs: You Must See Before You Die.
Publisher: Cassell (7 Sept. 2017)
by
From the oldest surviving photograph from 1826, to Trump’s election win in 2016, this is a chronological tour through the greatest images ever captured, and an all-inclusive guide to the art of photography.
The book is available here.
My Normandy series is published in the September 2017 issue of the Italian magazine, Internazionale.
Image: Detail of ‘South Downs Way, East Sussex, 2007’ from the series, We English
British Landscape and the Imagination: 1970s to Now
I have several pieces included in this group show, an Arts Council Collection National Partner Exhibition running from 30 SEP – 21 JAN 2018.
This major survey exhibition focuses on artists who have shaped our understanding of the British landscape and its relationship to identity, place and time. Exploring how artists interpret urban and rural landscape through the lens of their own cultural, political or spiritual ideologies, the exhibition reveals the inherent tensions between landscape represented as a transcendental or spiritual place, and one rooted in social and political histories.
Though primarily photography, A Green and Pleasant Land includes film, painting and sculpture by over 50 artists, illustrating the various concerns and approaches to landscape pursued by artists from the 1970s to now.
Artists included in the exhibition: Keith Arnatt, Gerry Badger, Craig Barker, John Blakemore, Henry Bond and Liam Gillick, Paul Caponigro, Thomas Joshua Cooper, John Davies, Susan Derges, Mark Edwards, Anna Fox, Melanie Friend, Hamish Fulton, Fay Godwin, Andy Goldsworthy, Paul Graham, Mishka Henner, Paul Hill, Robert Judges, Angela Kelly, Chris Killip, John Kippin, Karen Knorr, Ian Macdonald, Ron McCormick, Mary McIntyre, Peter Mitchell, Raymond Moore, John Myers, Martin Parr, Mike Perry, Ingrid Pollard, Mark Power, Paul Reas, Emily Richardson, Ben Rivers, Simon Roberts, Paul Seawright, Andy Sewell, Theo Simpson, Graham Smith, Jem Southam, Jo Spence, John Stezaker, Paddy Summerfield, The Caravan Gallery, Chris Wainwright, Patrick Ward, Clare Woods and Donovan Wylie.
http://www.townereastbourne.org.uk/exhibition/a-green-and-pleasant-land/
Image: by Alex Valin, 2015. Waiting for the Tour de France, Etretat, Normandy.
My new series, Normandy, has just launched at Centre photographique – Pôle Image Haute-Normandie. The work was made between 20014-2016 as part of a residency with the Centre photographique.
ABOUT: “So here is Normandy, her holidays and festivals, as seen by an Englishman. This particular cross-Channel cousin, Simon Roberts, is a young star of English photography. Born in 1974, he belongs to a typically British tradition that consists of trying to illustrate the link between landscape and people. In 2009 he finishes a landmark series of images, gathered in a book titled We English: it’s a narrative of the English countryside as it is lived and hiked through—a space where life happens in daily routines, in holidays, in rituals even.” Raphaëlle Stopin, Curator.
The Centre Photographique in Rouen has asked Roberts to look at the region of greater Normandy as part of an ongoing project initiated several years ago, involving a selection of photographers, to focus on landscapes such as the ocean cliffs, the Seine valley, and renovated urban areas. This time, Roberts’ residency has revealed a territory conceived of as a vast human landscape.
Image: Célébration du 14 juillet avec un barbecue, Yport, Seine-Maritime, 14 Juillet 2014
“Beware, O voyager, the road travels as well,” Rainer Maria Rilke wrote. A landscape, far from being a frozen reality, is experience and interaction, a negotiated interface between the environment and the person who peoples it with his or her footsteps and emotions. Collectively and individually, we and the landscape weave together a storyline mixing the real and the symbolic, the cultural and the natural, the objective and the subjective.
Over two years of work the photographer has followed a trail of local fêtes, parades, memorial ceremonies and leisure activities. While everything around him is movement, flux, mobility, he stands still. Camped on the top of his van or perched on top of a ladder, he captures the fleeting encounter between an environment and those who occupy it for a day. The tone of the encounter is often casual, as in a still showing a group of friends adopting a corner of the Yport cliffs, readying a barbecue grill as if in a corner of their own garden. Finally these are “affective” landscapes, sites made for sharing.
Image: Football Club Barentinois, Barentin, 22 Novembre 2014
From such a vantage point, the lens of Simon Roberts seems panoramic. The resulting space between the lens on one hand, and its subject and characters on the other, avoids the pitfall of the anecdotal or ephemeral to confer on scenes as trivial as a swim or bike ride the majesty of a landscape portrait. In the physical space of his large images Simon Roberts crafts a generous, inquisitive and friendly portrait of Normandy and of those who wander her byways. His images, as they explore rural hamlets, beaches, and sports fields, reveal an unexpected and joyous diversity of customs and manners of “living” her landscapes.
You can find more information and some installation photographs HERE.
After Rouen, the exhibition will tour to Caen and Evreux. More details to follow.