Join us on a reflective journey as we present a week-long screening of artist Simon Roberts’ compelling film, An Avoidable Loss, A Failure of State.

This poignant piece weaves Roberts’ seascape photographs, captured daily during the COVID-19 pandemic, with government press conference recordings, personal testimonials, and a moving monologue by actor, Rory Kinnear.

As we approach the fourth anniversary of the first lockdown of the pandemic, the film encourages us to contemplate the profound impact of the crisis. Exploring themes of grief, outrage, and asking critical questions surrounding the government’s response, it offers an immersive experience that some may find deeply emotional. Four years on, the film tries to comprehend the unprecedented challenges faced by society in 2020.

23-28 March 2024.

The film will be screening in Room 11 and is included as part of the price of general admission.

🎟️: Book your tickets here.

 

There will also be an exclusive one-off screening at Flowers Gallery in London

Saturday 23 March 2024
2:00pm

82 Kingsland Road, London E2

The 33 minute film will be introduced by Simon Roberts, followed by a Q&A.

Free admission, RSVP essential here.

 

I’ve released a new print from my archive as part of this group exhibition at The Photographers’ Gallery (Print Sales).

It will be on show alongside the works of eleven other artists who have responsed to the theme of winter landscape.

The Winter Editions is a new collection that celebrates the beauty, wonder, and whimsy of the season as the winter’s festivities begin. Twelve artists interpret the theme in their distinctive style, inviting us to embark on a visual journey through winter landscapes that span from the vast expanse of the Siberian Arctic to the lush and mystical forests of Croatia.

Image: Building a Landscape Part I, Devil’s Dyke (single screen video, 4min, edition 3)

Flowers Gallery is pleased to present the 41st edition of the annual Small is Beautiful exhibition, which will take place at the Cork Street gallery and online.

Flowers first introduced Small Is Beautiful in 1974, inviting a select group of contemporary artists working across various media to produce works at a fixed scale of no more than 7 x 9 inches. Since its inception, the show has provided a rare opportunity to showcase smaller pieces by internationally recognised names and discover new talents.

I’m showing two new works from my ongoing series A Scene Most Unfit For A Picture, exploring a landscape in Sussex, which can be viewed here and here.

Building a Landscape Part 2, Devil’s Dyke
Pigment print in perspex box frame (can be purchased as a pair with ‘Building a Landscape, Part 1)
26 x 21 x 4 cm
10 1/4 x 8 1/4 x 1 5/8 in
Edition of 7

You can see all of the pieces in the show here: https://privateviews.artlogic.net/2/5553d43a7cf57a52511a3b/

The latest exhibition of my series, Beneath The Pilgrim Moon, will be on show in Milan, Italy, at Other Size Gallery. It is curated by Claudio Compositi in collaboration with MC2 Gallery.

Prendre le Soleil (Taking the Sun) explores the fascination that this star exerts on contemporary artists. The works of visual artists, photographers, musicians and videographers will interact in spaces with scientific imagery.

Each artist testifies to the power or ambivalence of the sun which has been and remains a major and inexhaustible source of creation. From photography to performance, including sculpture, drawing, embroidery, writing and even video, all mediums are called upon to better approach this inaccessible star, in order to observe it, s grasp it and imagine it, to represent it.

I will be showing a video created by Wieden+Kennedy Tokyo where I was filmed in a somewhat futile attempt to photograph 24 sunsets across the Earth’s time zones in 24 hours! Chasing the Sun became a global print and TV campaign for Citizen Watch.

The exhibition is on show at Hangar Y in Meudon, a suburb of Paris. .

Download a press release here.

Above: Screengrab from Chasing the Sun

My series, Cathedrals Are Built in the Future, will be included in this exhibition by Cuban and European artists «Where are you from? Cuba Photography Missions” at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (National Museum of Fine Arts of Cuba) from 20 October 2023.

The exhibition, sponsored by the University of the Arts (ISA) and the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Antwerp, includes on its list the names of Bert Danckaert and Charlotte Lybeer, from Belgium; Simon Roberts, from England, and Ulla Deventer, from Germany; as well as the Cubans Liudmila and Nelson, Linnet Sánchez, Ricardo Elías and Ossain Raggi; The latter is also co-curator of the collective display of photographs and videos, together with Joachim Naudts.

With the technical assistance of Margarita González Lorente, curator of the MNBA, «Where are you from? Cuba Photography Missions” proposes an approach to reality in the country from the personal poetics of our artists and their European counterparts, assuming Cuban contemporaneity as a topic of reflection, among universal aspects that specify the thematic and formal coherence of the exhibition.

 

© Golf Paysan, Flamanville, 2021, Série Impressions of Normandie

Simon ROBERTS: Un air de vacances

Exhibition from September 8 to October 21 2023

Opening with the artist on Thursday September 7, from 6pm to 9pm

For the upcoming September season, the Sit Down gallery is pleased to present Un air de vacances, by photographer Simon Roberts. The exhibition invites us to discover a British artist’s view of French people on vacation. Through his series Impressions of Normandie , Simon Roberts captures a panorama of outdoor leisure activities. These scenes of seaside bathing, cycling and picnics, far from being trivial, are part of a history of landscape that is either English or French.

This series was made during a residency at the Centre Photographique Rouen Normandie and the Château de Flamanville.

 

Download press release.

Between Tides is the resulting exhibition from my 2022 Artist in Residence programme with Guernsey Museums & Galleries.

The residency focussed on Guernsey’s harbours – St Peter Port and St Sampson’s –  which I explored with large format landscape photographs, a series of portraits, and video work, the notion of territory and identity. The artist in residence programme is a collaboration between Guernsey Photography Festival and Guernsey Museums & Galleries.  Since 2012 it has welcomed Martin Parr (UK), Klavdij Sluban (Slovenia), Michelle Sank (South Africa), Jason Wilde (UK), Mark Power (UK), Gregoire Eloy (France),  Sian Davey (UK) and Cristina De Middel (Spain/ Mexico).

Guernsey’s harbours – St Peter Port and St Sampson – have long played a crucial role in the history of the island. The former was used since ancient times by the Romans, the Vikings and the Normans, but both ports became important strategic locations during World War II. The sites have continued evolving over the centuries and become vital for the island’s trade and commerce. Fuel tankers now discharge alongside berths where quarrymen once loaded stone onto sailing ships. Over a hundred years ago, majestic ‘three masters’ docked for passengers relieved to walk ashore after a long and perilous journey. Now travellers drive off the fast ferries while cruise ships disembark their passengers keen to photograph the picturesque seafront and its layers of multicoloured facades. The harbours have been the island’s lifeline and remain so to this day.

The exhibition runs from Friday 30th June until Monday 28th August, open daily 10am-5pm.

The private view is 29th June, 6.30-7.30pm, before which there will be an opportunity to hear me discuss this project and my career with Jean-Christophe Godet in the Frossard Theatre from 5.30-6.30pm . Tickets to this talk are FREE, however must be booked in advance through Eventbrite, details will be released on our social media.

This exhibition has been printed entirely on recyclable materials.

In Carrara, an Italian city frequented over the centuries by sculptors from all over the world for the marble of the Apuan Alps and the city’s highly specialized workers, the seventh edition of White Carrara will be staged from 17 June to 1 October 2023. It’s an event involving the entire historic centre of the city with sculptures and installations by national and international artists in the streets and squares.

Prints from my series, Beneath The Pilgrim Moon, will be on show at Palazzo Binelli, headquarters of the Cassa di Risparmio di Carrara Foundation (Via Verdi, 7), alongside works by Bruno Cattani, Giacomo Infantino, Carolina Sandretto and Dune Varela.

Also on view will be the sculptures of Sergi Barnils, Mattia Bosco, Stefano Canto, Michelangelo Galliani, MOG, Mikayel Ohanjanyan and Quayola located, together with a historical work by Giò Pomodoro, in front of the Academy of Fine Arts of Carrara.
A press kit is available here.

A Call to the Commons is a public art and architecture project that builds on the London Festival of Architecture 2023 theme ‘In Common’.

The high street is an urban-commons and its role is changing fast. We are in a period of testing and prototyping new models of living and working in a post pandemic world, models that call us to question our ideas about how we use and occupy our public spaces, ownership, and protest. Through this project street media is used to explore the notion of the commons through 6 newly commissioned posters by artists, architects and designers installed on billboards, fly posters and digital screens across London.

‘Together for the Final Say’ is my response to the commission. On October 19, 2019, campaigners from the People’s Vote movement took part in the ‘Together for the Final Say’ event calling for a second Brexit referendum. Their message was that regardless on how the public voted in the Brexit referendum, the British people deserved a say on the final deal negotiated. Supporters amassed in Parliament Square for this common cause, after marching en masse through central London. It’s estimated that up to 400,000 attended the event, making it one of the biggest ever outpouring of pro-EU sentiment.

The photograph portrays a large group of the People’s Vote campaigners crowded around the statue of Millicent Fawcett in the shadow of the Palace of Westminster, which honours the British suffragist leader and social campaigner Dame Millicent Fawcett – the first monument to a woman in Parliament Square and also its first sculpture by a woman (Gillian Wearing). In the wake of the Government’s 2023 Public Order Bill, where the legal definition of ‘serious disruption’ has been broadened, giving police greater flexibility when to intervene to stop disruptive protests, the photograph questions how our public spaces are now being policed and also references the debate about who we see memorialised in our public spaces.

Guests are invited to visit site locations throughout June. All locations can be sourced here. My posters are located:

Billboards: 5 – 18 June
Gypsy Corner, Victoria, London W3 6HU

Poster sites:
Wardour St, Westminster
A406 Barnet
Brixton Atlantic Road

Digital: 5 June – 2 July
Holland Park Digital Roundabout, W12 8LZ

Commissioned by Aldo Rinaldi and Rumi Bose, and sponsored by Build Hollywood and Cross River Partnership.