Image: Installation shot from Homeland, Flowers Gallery New York (Clevedon Pier on the left)
To celebrate its 30th anniversary issue Photograph Magazine asked 30 people to choose an image that meant something to them in 2018. Sarah Schmerler, Art Critic and Independent Curator, selected my photograph of Clevedon Pier, which was on show at Flowers Gallery in New York.
“Where are we? How did we get here? Many of Simon Roberts’s pictures beg those sorts of deep questions, but this one in particular compels me [Clevedon Pier]. It is melancholy, delicate, yet strong. Here I am in a world that, at least for a moment, has been blotted out. The tiny weather vane points north. The British flag hangs limp. Whatever breeze once came through here has since passed. No need to get my bearings now; I know this psychic place because over the last year I have awoken to an America that more and more I don’t recognize. And the tide, it is rising.” Sarah Schmerler, January 2019.
Download PDF here.
Bringing together contemporary and historical representations of Blackpool’s piers, Neither Land nor Sea, documents the enduring appeal of the architecture, atmosphere and activity of these Seaside structures.
Alongside paintings and photographic works from the Grundy’s Collection, a series of images by 19th Century, Blackpool-based photographer, Albert Eden, will also be exhibited. Printed from glass slides; part of Blackpool Council’s Heritage Collections, these images will be shown alongside a selection of work from photographers based in, or with links to Blackpool and the Fylde Coast, for whom Blackpool’s piers are a frequent subject.
Featuring works by; Albert Eden, H. Burrell, Joseph Conrad Morley, Thomas Huson, Simon Roberts, Linzi Cason, Karl Child, Yannick Dixon, Claire Griffiths, Dawn Mander, Jill Reidy, Richard Jon and Kate Yates.
You can read a review of the exhibition in Corridor 8 HERE.
Image: H. Burrell Pavilion Fire, North Pier 1921.
EVENTS
Saturday 14 April, 3pm – 5pm: Neither Land nor Sea, Artists’ Talk
Saturday 9 June, (time tbc): Blackpool North Pier, Tour and Talk
Saturday 16 June, 3pm – 5pm: The Social History of Blackpool’s Piers, an Illustrated Talk by Tony Sharkey
All events are FREE and will take place at the Grundy apart from the Blackpool North Pier, Tour and Talk. Please contact the Grundy or see our website for further information about any of these events
Image: Installation from the exhibition The Great British Seaside, National Maritime Museum, London, 2018
Prints from Merrie Albion and Pierdom have recently been acquired by several Museums and private collections.
National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, London, is the leading maritime museum of the United Kingdom and may be the largest museum of its kind in the world. The Museum’s fine art collection consists of contemporary art, miniatures, oil paintings, photography, prints, drawings, watercolours and sculpture.
The Museum have collected two prints from Merrie Albion, which were included in the group exhibition, The Great British Seaside, (March – September 2018).
View the collection: http://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections.html#!cbrowse
The V&A is the world’s leading museum of art and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.3 million objects that span over 5,000 years of human creativity. The Museum holds many of the UK’s national collections and houses some of the greatest resources for the study of architecture, furniture, fashion, textiles, photography, sculpture, painting, jewellery, glass, ceramics, book arts, Asian art and design, theatre and performance.
The Museum have acquired ‘Brighton West Pier, West Sussex, 2011’ from my series Pierdom.
View the collection: https://www.vam.ac.uk/collections/photographs
The Incite Project is a collection of issue-driven photographic prints, motivated by current political and social concerns that are still within our power to correct. The core of the collection are the classics of 20th-century photojournalism that have become visual markers of a moment in time – the assassination of JFK, a rare shot of the Normandy D-Day landing, Nelson Mandela in his cell on Robben Island, to name but a few. The collection is also motivated by a passion to support the photographers and artists currently making extraordinary, thought-provoking images about contemporary issues.
Incite have acquired a selection of prints from Merrie Albion.
You can read an interview with Harriet Logan and curator Tristan Lund here: http://www.metaphorimages.com/wordpress/?p=12161
The Hyman Collection seeks to support and promote British photography through acquisitions, loans and education. In 2015 it launched britishphotography.org to provide online access to British photographs in the collection and to use this part of the collection as an educational resource to increase international awareness of British photography. As well as including forms of documentary photography, the collection focuses on artists working in photography who have pursued more subjective or conceptual strategies. The collection has historic as well as contemporary photographs and includes an equal number of works by male and female artists.
The Collection have acquired a box-set of Merrie Albion prints.
View the collection: http://www.britishphotography.org/artists/16336/statement/simon-roberts
Finally, the Sir Elton John Collection have acquired a print from Merrie Albion.
Photo: Detail from Brighton Beach, 2007
Opening in March 2018, The Great British Seaside: Photography from the 1960s to the present is a major new exhibition exploring Britain’s relationship with the seaside through the lenses of the nation’s best loved photographers, Martin Parr, Tony Ray-Jones, David Hurn and Simon Roberts.
Many of us in Britain look back with fondness on memories of paddles in the sea and picnics on the promenade. Yet the seaside can also be a place of faded glory and acute deprivation. These tensions have provided fertile ground for documentary photographers who have sought to capture the ambiguities and eccentricities that define a day at the British seaside.
Read an article in The British Journal of Photography about the show, Celebrating the seaside at the National Maritime Museum.
Discover the lives and careers of Martin Parr, Tony Ray-Jones, David Hurn, and Simon Roberts and hear in their own words what draws them to the seaside, Photographers at the seaside.
Buy the accompanying book here, The Great British Seaside: Photography from the 1960s to the Present. Published to accompany the 2018 National Maritime Museum exhibition The Great British Seaside: Photography from the 1960s to the Present, this book showcases over 100 photographs, including material from each of the photographers’ archival collections, newly commissioned works, and never-before-seen images.
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/
Necsus: European Journal of Media Studies (Autumn 2016) has a review of my Pierdom work. Written by Brydon, Lavinia and Jenzen, Olu (2016).
Precis:
Review of British photographer Simon Roberts’s project Pierdom, exhibited at the Brighton Museum and Art Gallery in 2015. Interview with Roberts. The review discusses Robert’s work which centres on questions of people and place, particularly in regard to the construction and promotion of national identity both from an aesthetic, historical and cultural studies point of view. The exhibition and its engagement with its audiences is contextualised in relation to the AHRC Connected Communities Research Project ‘The People’s Pier’. Drawing on research findings about local communities and their relation to their pier as a heritage asset and popular culture venue, the review argues the exhibition portrays piers as lived experiences shaped by the mood of the time and the socio-cultural make-up of their location. Roberts captures details which reveal the small economies of British seaside tourism as well as the context of piers in the landscape and the imprint of economic changes in these costal regions. From 2011-2013 Roberts toured the British coastline capturing the country’s 58 surviving pleasure piers as well as a few ‘lost’ piers with a 4×5 inch field camera.
Read the full text here.
NECSUS is an international, double blind peer-reviewed journal of media studies connected to NECS (European Network for Cinema and Media Studies) and published by Amsterdam University Press. The journal is multidisciplinary and strives to bring together the best work in the field of media studies across the humanities and social sciences. We aim to publish research that matters and that improves the understanding of media and culture inside and outside the academic community.
Pierdom is featured in the Autumn issue of NECSUS (European Network for Cinema and Media Studies), reviewed by Lavinia Brydon (University of Kent) and Olu Jenzen (University of Brighton).
NECSUS is an international, double blind peer-reviewed journal of media studies connected to NECS and published by Amsterdam University Press.
You can read the piece here:
Hastings Pier is proud to present an exhibition from Simon Roberts Pierdom collection on the Pier Head.
At the turn of the 20th century, the British coastline boasted over 100 pleasure piers. Now only 58 survive. Simon Roberts spent three years photographing them, culminating in a fascinating record of these monuments of Victorian engineering and eccentricity.
Roberts’ 4×5 inch field camera, used for the series, reflects the rapidly developing photographic technology during the Victorian era.
This presentation presents the first time Pierdom has been exhibited on a pier.
To find out more information please visit the Hastings Pier Trust website or download a flyer here.
There will also be several pinhole camera workshops available to attend: http://hastingspier.org.uk/event/pierdom-free-pinhole-camera-workshops/
The exhibition has been made possible with support from the Hasting Pier Trust, PhotoHastings and Flowers Gallery.
I will be showing several prints from Pierdom at this year’s PondyPHOTO in Pondycherry, India. The prints are part of a group show curated by Cheryl Newman entitled ‘The Kitchen Sink’.
The exhibition also includes works by Mustafah Abduliaziz (USA), Corey Arnold (USA), Marcus Bleasdale, UK, Antoine Bruy (France), Solmaz Daryani (Iran), Mitch Epstein (USA), Rose Lynn Fisher (USA), Stephen Gill (UK), Noemie Goudal (France), Tom Hunter (UK), Max Pinckers (Belgium), Yan Preston (China/UK), Alessandra Sanguinetti (USA), Nigel Shafran (UK), Bharat Sikka (India), Alec Soth (USA), Maurice Van Es (Netherlands) and Vasantha Yogananthan (France).
PondyPHOTO, a biennale festival initiated by PondyART, is a platform where art and education attempt to break existing social barriers, by presenting visually impactful photography-oriented events focused on today’s social and environmental issues in public spaces. The theme for PondyPHOTO 2016 is WATER.
I’ll be showing work, including some prints from the recently released New Vedute series, at PhotoLondon with gallery Heinzer Reszler from Lausanne.
Other artists showing with the gallery are Mirko Baselgia, Mathieu Bernard-Reymond and Thibault Brunet. More details here.
Photo London will open to the public at Somerset House from 19 to 22 May 2016.
Somerset House
Strand
London WC2R 1LA
PUBLIC HOURS
Thursday 19 May 12:00 – 20:30
Friday 20 May 12:00 – 19:30
Saturday 21 May 12:00 – 18:00
Sunday 22 May 12:00 – 18:00
Tickets to the fair are available here.