I’m delighted to be giving a public lecture at the renowned George Eastman House on Saturday 9th November. The lecture is part of the Museum’s Wish You Were Here series.
More details here: http://www.eastmanhouse.org/events/detail.php?title=wywh_110913
The Wish You Were Here photography lecture series features renowned photographers sharing images and stories that invite you to explore new destinations or revisit favorite ones.
Lectures are held in the Dryden Theatre at George Eastman House. Admission is $6 ($3 students), free for members. Artists will sign their books following the lectures. Books are available in the Eastman House Store.
Wish You Were Here is generously supported by museum member Thomas N. Tischer.
The lecture will be held in the Dryden Theatre at 2pm. Admission is $6 ($3 students), free for members. A book signing will take place afterwards.
Please join us on Thursday, November 7, 6pm—8pm, for the artist reception celebrating Simon Roberts” third solo exhibition online casino at the KLOMPCHING GALLERY.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION AND VIEWING APPOINTMENTS, CONTACT:
DEBRA KLOMP CHING T: 1 212 796 2070 E: [email protected]
Simon Roberts | Pierdom
Exhibition from November 2 2013 to January 11 2014
Please join us for an Opening Reception on Friday, November 1 2013 at 6pm.
As in previous work, notably “Motherland” (2007) and “We English” (2009), British photographer Simon Roberts examines cultural-historical questions of national identity and the attachment of people to their land through his large format landscape photographs. “Perhaps the most promising British image maker in years”, as German Photo Magazine called him in 2010, traveled across England over the last years, visiting coastal towns and producing a series of photographs of the pleasure piers built since Victorian times.
I have created a new series of works as part of a commission for The Social: encountering photography, a month long international celebration of photography across the North East of England.
Landscapes of Leisure opens on 18 October 2013, 5-9pm and will see large-scale photographs installed in locations across Sunderland, including-
City Library and Arts Centre, Fawcett Street, Sunderland, SR1 1RE
Sunderland Museum and Winter Gardens (External Installation), Burdon Road, Sunderland, SR1 1PP
The Bridges, Market Square, Sunderland, SR1 3DR
Newcastle Central Metro Station, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1.
View the maps here- http://www.thesocialnepn.co.uk/map/
Artist Talk and Walk: 19 September 2013, 11am meet at Sunderland Museum Foyer. All welcome.
Herrington Country Park, Houghton le Spring, July 2013 © Simon Roberts
About Landscapes of Leisure-
Extending his exploration of the English social landscape, Simon Roberts has worked on a major commission for The Social: encountering photography. A series of large-scale colour photographs, made in various locations throughout Sunderland, are sited in different gallery and public contexts: in the foyer of Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art, on the rear façade of Sunderland Museum & Winter Gardens, in The Bridges shopping centre as well as on the platform at Newcastle Central metro station. The photographs are echoingly familiar, yet also distanced. As in the traditions of large-scale history painting that inform them, we encounter highly socialized and deliberately lyrical environments. Yet these are thoroughly contemporary landscapes, where ordinary people get on with their various activities and pursuits. Some of these are solitary – taking the dog for a walk, or lost in reverie on a park bench. But most of all these are sociable and socialized environments, full of activity. To some viewers the locations will be immediately recognizable, while for many others the ways in which people use and inhabit the spaces – having a picnic, flying a kite, playing football or cycling – provide the more immediate points of connection. As in many of Simon’s projects, themes of memory and identity attach to the otherwise ordinary past-times and vistas. The relationships between people and places create a rich tapestry of social observation, while the high and often distant vantage points give a sense of the contemporary existence of each different landscape, as well as the accretions of historical use, social transformation and reinvention.
Lakeside Village, Sunderland, July 2013 © Simon Roberts
About The Social: encountering photography
The Social is an initiative of the North East Photography Network (NEPN) in partnership with the Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art, Sunderland.
We are delighted to be working with an array of photographers and artists from around the world to create a dynamic exchange of photographic practices and experimentation, embracing varied social contexts and activities. Throughout our four-week programme of exhibitions, talks, tours and debates, The Social seeks to provide new opportunities for audiences to engage with high quality lens-based practice in ways that are accessible and relevant. The Social aims to create an internationally significant platform for regionally based photographers to showcase their work and will also bring artists and curators of international stature to the region to work alongside.
Sunderland is the creative hub of The Social, with important new partnerships at the Northern Centre of Photography, University of Sunderland, Sunderland Museum & Winter Gardens, The Bridges Shopping Centre, Sunderland Minster and the National Glass Centre. In extending the reach of The Social across the region, we are also delighted to be working with Durham Art Gallery, Side Gallery, The NewBridge Project and PH Space in Newcastle, as well as Arts Centre Washington amongst others.
The Social is committed to the development of a vibrant creative context for photography in the region, through supporting artists to produce and exhibit new work. Key to this philosophy has been the continued support of Arts Council England and the University of Sunderland. Artists premiering newly commissioned works during The Social include: Irwan Ahmett and Tita Salina; Craig Ames; John Kippin; Sarah Pickering; Simon Roberts and Stuart Whipps.
You can find more detail about the festival on their facebook page here – https://www.facebook.com/events/590822437642659/?source=1
We English is being exhibited at the 2013 Festival Fotografico Europeo in Busto Arsizio, near Milan, Italy.
The exhibition is courtesy of mc2 gallery.
For more information visit: http://www.europhotofestival.it/simon%20roberts.php
Some new work I’ve made in Sunderland is featured in this group show, staged jointly between Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art and Sunderland Museum and Winter Gardens.
Exhibition dates: NGCA: 28 Sept – 23 Nov 2013
Sunderland Museum and Winter Gardens: 19 Oct 2013 – 23 Feb 2014.
The exhibition is part of ‘The Social: Encountering Photography’ – a month of photography in Sunderland and North-East England.
Tunstall Hills, Sunderland, July 2013 © Simon Roberts
Artists are: Craig Ames, Ulf Aminde, Haley Austin, Natasha Caruana, Nick Crowe & Ian Rawlinson, Melanie Friend, Gilbert & George, Julian Germain, Paul Graham, Chris Harrison, Nigel Henderson, Jeremy Hutchison, Yee I-Lann, Bob Jardine, James O Jenkins, Linder, Melanie Manchot, Daniel Meadows, Gustav Metzger, Tim Mitchell, Martin Parr, Reynold Reynolds, Reynold Reynolds with Patrick Jolley, Simon Roberts, Thiago Rocha Pitta, Daniele Sambo, Jo Spence, John Stezaker, Homer Sykes, Stuart Whipps
‘YOU ARE THE COMPANY IN WHICH YOU KEEP’ reveals the diverse ways in which photographers and artists using lens-based media have created images that map out our new social networks – observing the patterns of which structure our social existence, or forecasting what the twenty-first century has yet to bring. Many of the artists might be described as working in anthropological or ethnographic ways, observing how our experience of the world is mediated through camera lens, and asking how far photographic images structure our imagination. They ask: in the twenty-first century, are images the means by which we are socialised, and the means by which we can know ourselves? Do the images that we consume and internalise become the imaginative materials that we are made of?
The exhibition spans the two neighbouring venues of Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art and Sunderland Museum & Winter Gardens, with each examining separate aspects of how photographic images now suffuse every aspect of our lives. At NGCA, more than 20 artists investigate how the neoliberal economics and continuing military muscle of so-called post-industrial countries determine how far the modern world is being shaped.
As part of the Pierdom exhibition at Flowers Gallery I will be doing an artist talk with Francis Hodgson. The event is free to attend, but numbers are limited. Please RSVP to [email protected].
Pierdom will be featured in a group show titled ‘Uragano’ at the Palazzo Tagliaferro contemporary culture centre in Andora. The work will be exhibited alongside that of Andrea Guastavino and Oriella Montin, curated by Nicola Davide Angerame.
For more information about the gallery visit their website here.
Prints from Pierdom will be on show at Robert Morat Galerie at unseen photo fair, Amsterdam from 26 – 29th September 2013. Signed copies of the book will also be available.
You can find more about the work Robert will be showing here.
My second solo exhibition at Flowers Gallery in London will be Pierdom, opening on 10th September. An associated book, published by Dewi Lewis Publishing, will be launched on the same night.
For more details, visit http://www.flowersgallery.com/exhibitions/flowers/2013/simon-roberts-pierdom
British photographer Simon Roberts has spent the past three years creating Pierdom, a comprehensive survey of Britain’s piers. Predominantly constructed during the 19th Century in the context of expanding Victorian seaside resorts and railways, these structures were often erected as landing docks for pleasure steamers and other sea craft. Growing to accommodate the needs of day-trippers escaping the smog of the city, engineers began to incorporate bandstands, cafes and music halls into their designs, embracing the growing notion of ‘pleasure seeking’ by the seaside.
Pierdom addresses the historical significance of these architectural structures placed in comparison with their modern interpretation and functionality. Roberts’ photographs of ruinous piers such as Birnbeck Pier (2012) are in contrast with those such as Ryde Pier (2012) in which the local community and everyday usage of the landscape is represented by a skate boarding park which dominates the composition. It is this socio-cultural element of the landscape that has sustained Roberts’ interest, revealing a deep fascination with the way humans interact with their environment, and in eccentric British pastimes.
At the turn of the century the British coastline boasted over 100 piers, some modest and functional, others elegant, exotic Victorian structures thrusting out into the sea. Now under half remain, the others destroyed by fierce weather and fires, with many dismantled during the 2nd World War to prevent German landings. Britain’s piers have become cultural landmarks, tracing history, national identity and economic fortunes from Victorian industrialism to the post-war boom, and finally now to the recent economic downturn.
Roberts’ large format photographs are taken with great technical precision, often from elevated positions encorporating peripheral details and the elements, thus enriching the viewing experience of each print. Through formal devices associated with the picturesque; perspective, asymmetry and juxtaposition, the photographs engage us with contemporary issues about our uneasy and fragile relationship to both nature, and our urban environments.The series is at once factual yet warm, a broad architectural and anthropological study of our coastline as a microcosm of British society.
