Composed of two parts; ‘How did we get here?’ showcases various photographic and video works spanning the past 15 years of my career including We English, Pierdom, Merrie Albion and the Brexit Lexicon. It explores issues around identity, belonging and the complex relationship between history, place, and culture. The second part, ‘Where do we go now?’ allows visitors to participate in a series of workshops and open sessions where people are given a unique opportunity to respond creatively to the current social climate, culminating in a new artwork piece (The Public Gallery), that will develop over the course of the exhibition. The new piece will be unveiled in the storefront window in the last week of the exhibition.

Running from 20th May to 30th June, the FREE to enter exhibition will be held every Wednesday-Sunday from 11am-5pm at the previous H&M store within Grosvenor Shopping Centre in Chester, in a newly remodelled space that offers an immersive environment in the heart of the city.

My photograph and video works, which are displayed over both floors of the former H&M store, offer a commentary on the social and political issues that we face in our daily lives, questioning the choices that have led us to where we are today. Together, the two elements of the exhibition will act as a catalyst for open discussion about the function of the British High Street as the future use of urban spaces are increasingly debated. The work touches on prevalent and contentious issues, from exposing our post-imperial predicament, the complications of New Commonwealth immigration, the Brexit schism, to the possibilities of UK devolution and the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic.

We have arranged an extensive public programme collaborating with local schools, Universities and community groups. Workshops are being led by local volunteers and are also working with Redeye, Photoworks and collage artist, Mark Murphy. Some of the public workshops available to the general public are:

Zine / poster workshop in response to the Simon Roberts exhibition
9 & 11 June

Book: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/zine-poster-workshop-in-response-to-the-simon-roberts-exhibition-tickets-645950735037?aff=erellivmlt

Redeye – the Photography Network – workshops for Degree and A’level student
15 June

Book: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/redeye-the-photography-network-workshops-for-degree-and-alevel-student-tickets-638566207717?aff=ebdssbdestsearch

Collage workshop with Mark Murphy
18 June

Book: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/collage-workshop-with-mark-murphy-tickets-638612275507?aff=erelpanelorg

The exhibition was commissioned by Chester Visual Arts and funded by Arts Council England.

You can download a pdf with more information about the exhibition here.

 

CIVILIZATION: The Way We Live Now is an unprecedented look at humankind’s rapidly mutating collective life across the globe, consisting of over 350 original prints by 150 internationally renowned artists​. The exhibition will be on show at Saatchi Gallery in London from 2 June – 17 September 2023.
I have several prints included from my series, Merrie Albion- Landscape Studies of a Small Island. Other works include photographs by Olivo Barbieri, Peter Bialobrzeski, Edward Burtynsky, Lynne Cohen, Mitch Epstein, Lee Friedlander, Lauren Greenfield, Chris Jordan, Nadav Kander, An-My Lê, Richard Misrach, Robert Polidori, Toshio Shibata, Taryn Simon, Thomas Struth, and Massimo Vitali.

The exhibition has so far toured to: National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul, Korea (2018); Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, China (2019); National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia (2020); Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, Auckland, New Zealand (2020); Musée des Civilisations de l’Europe et de la Méditerranée (Mucem), Marseille, France (2021) and Musei San Domenico, Forlì, Italy (2022)

FOTOGRAFIA EUROPEA 2023 – EUROPE MATTERS: VISIONS OF A RESTLESS IDENTITY

From 28 April to 11 June 2023, Fotografia Europea returns to Reggio Emilia, Italy, the photography festival with an increasingly international standing having been recently named as Photo Festival of the Year at the Lucie Awards 2022.

Starting from a reflection on the idea of Europe and the ideals that underpin it, the exhibitions bring to the surface questions concerning the current state of the multicultural and globalised world we live in: a world in which for some time now, Europe has no longer exercised that spiritual and material hegemony that were attributed to it for centuries. Through the medium of photography, the artists trace the dynamic and uncertain lines of an increasingly mobile and porous identity, with the aim of making sense of the restlessness that runs through it.

Tim Clark (Editor of 1000 Words), Walter Guadagnini (photography historian and Director of CAMERA – Centro Italiano per la Fotografia) and Luce Lebart (French photography historian, curator and researcher both for the Archive of Modern Conflict Collection and independently) form this year’s team of artistic directors.

The monumental Chiostri di San Pietro will constitute the hub of the festival, hosting 10 solo exhibitions. More details of my exhibition can be found here.

The latest touring venue for Generations: Portraits of Holocaust Survivors is the Imperial War Museum in Manchester. The exhibition will showcase works from 13 contemporary photographers, all members and Fellows of the Royal Photographic Society (RPS), alongside photography by RPS patron, Her Royal Highness The Princess of Wales.

I am exhibiting my video portraits, which can be seen here.

Generations, Imperial War Museum North, Manchester, June 2023

Through a series of individual and family portraits, the moving photographs in this exhibition present a group of survivors who made the UK their home after beginnings marked by unimaginable loss and trauma. While offering a space to remember and share their stories, these portraits are a celebration of the rich lives they have lived and the special legacy which their children and grandchildren will carry into the future.

Photographers include Frederic Aranda, Sian Bonnell, Jillian Edelstein, Arthur Edwards, Anna Fox, Joy Gregory, Jane Hilton, Tom Hunter, Karen Knorr, Carolyn Mendelsohn, Simon Roberts, Michelle Sank, Simon Hill and HRH The Princess of Wales.

Presented in partnership with the Royal Photographic Society (RPS), Jewish News, the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, Dangoor Education and Northern Partner The Fed.

Image: Eric Ravilious, Chalk Paths (1935)

I have three photographic works included in this group exhibition at Pallant House Gallery. Sussex Landscape: Chalk, Wood and Water (12 November 2022 – 23 April 2023) is the first major exhibition to celebrate Sussex as a place of inspiration for artists.

Sussex has a unique sense of place. Its distinctive chalk-cliff coastline and the rolling hills of the South Downs have inspired artists for centuries. While some found solace and reflection in the landscape, for others, it provided the vital space to explore different ways of living and artistic innovation.

The exhibition includes works by J.M.W Turner, William Nicholson, Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant, Ivon Hitchens, Eric Ravilious and Edward Burra. It also features work by contemporary artists to extend the dialogue between artistic expression and the landscape. As a connection between creative expression, personal freedom and commitment to understanding the landscape is being discussed with increasing urgency, this exhibition offers a moment to consider the work of those who have gone before and have captured a changing world.

A catalogue for the exhibition is available here.

The 40th edition of the annual Small is Beautiful exhibition, which presents works by over 100 artists, each measuring no more than 7 x 9 inches.

I am presenting a new work A Scene Most Unfit for a Picture, 2022 (stereoscope and stereoscopic viewer, unique).

While earlier editions proposed suggested themes, for instance Homages in 1993, War & Peace in 2003 and Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue? in 2013, Small Is Beautiful is now conceived as an open invitation for artists to explore scale in relation to their own practice.

Participating for the first time is Sean Scully, who this year also curated the group show Hidden UK, Hidden Ireland at Flowers Gallery Kingsland Road. Also exhibiting for the first time are interdisciplinary artist Adelaide Damoah, photographers Cody Cobb and Mark Duffy and painter Luke Silva. Returning artists include John Loker, who has participated in every edition, Amanda Faulkner who has shown with the gallery since the 1980s, Carol Robertson who first showed at Flowers in 1994 and Ishbel Myerscough who has been represented by the gallery since 2011.

Image: Mirko Baselgia, Supercutis Pinus cembra

I have some new Celestial cyanotype prints included in this group exhibition in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Other artists include:

Mirko Baselgia
Mathieu Bernard-Reymond
Sophie Bouvier Ausländer
Christian Gonzenbach
Andreas Hochuli
Mingjun Luo
Jessica Russ

Flowers Gallery is delighted to present an exhibition of recent work by Simon Roberts. Beneath the Pilgrim Moon (2021) is a collection of photographs taken at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum while it was closed to the public in the second COVID-19 lockdown. Photographing the marble sculptures housed in the Dorothy and Michael Hintze Galleries, which at the time were covered for their protection during the site’s renovation, Roberts conceived of the veiled statues as metaphors for our wider experience of the pandemic.

The photographs in this exhibition fuse ancient mythology and elegant eighteenth-century neoclassicism with the harsh sterility of twenty-first century plastic and gaffa tape, a juxtaposition that is at once eerie, disorientating, and compelling. Roberts’s decision to photograph the sculptures from unusual, unexpected angles gives the images a further sense of unease and vulnerability. In his image of Foggini’s Samson and the Philistines, he crops out the scene’s hero, concentrating only on the wailing victim, while his choice to photograph just the protagonist’s pained face behind the plastic in Claude David’s Vulcan (or possibly Prometheus) chained to a rock gives the appearance of suffering. His photograph of Canova’s Theseus and the Minotaur taken at a sharp side angle and captured from a distance, appears despondent, pensive and lonely.

A central image, Shrouded Sculpture #8 (Monument to Lady Winchilsea by Lawrence MacDonald), is presented on translucent mesh fabric, tethered to the ceiling of the gallery. It was first shown in the outdoor exhibition curated by Meadow Arts entitled All Alone, held in the grounds of Croft Castle, Herefordshire in 2021, and is installed here in a gallery space for the first time. The printed fabric is subtly responsive to airflow and movements of passers-by, which endows the frozen marbles with a sense of fluidity and vitality, chiming with Robert’s desire to “animate these figures and breathe life into their static forms.”

Download a press release here and watch a video of me discussing the work here.

One of my Cloud Negatives has been selected for inclusion in this year’s Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in London. The theme chosen by the exhibition’s coordinator, Alison Wilding RA, is ‘Climate’ which has been interpreted in many different ways by the artists involved. My work is hung in the Lecture Room and was curated by artist Conrad Shawcross.

Run without interruption since 1769, the Summer Exhibition showcases art in all forms, from prints, painting, film and photography, to architectural works and sculpture by invited artists, Royal Academicians and emerging talent.

You can find details of the work on the RA’s website here.

Cloud Negative #1, 2021 

The latest edition of Civilization: The Way We Live Now photography exhibition is on show at Musei San Domenico in Forlì, Italy from September 17 2022 – January 8 2023. See website for updated opening hours and programming. I have several works included from my series, Merrie Albion.