Patrick Brill
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Patrick Brill, better known by his pseudonym Bob and Roberta Smith (born 1958) is a British contemporary artist.
[edit] Life and work
After studying at University of Reading Brill was awarded a scholarship at The British School at Rome, while still an undergradute, where he studied alongside Iain Macpherson. Brill's father was an established tutor at Chesea School of Art, which in turn led to indirectly to this opportunity. At this time Brill had a complete collection of Hancock's Half Hour Radio programmes on cassette, indeed his persona of the modern artist might be said to mirror the Tony Hancock film The Rebel in which urban anglo nonenity becomes lauded in avant garde Paris, before his integrity or fear of exposure, a kind of updated Emperor's New Clothes causes him to reveal or expose himself as a fraud and return to relative humdrum obscurity. Brill followed this with a MA at the conceptual hub that was Goldsmiths College London and could be said to have launched his "career". The possibly apocryphal story is that Brill devised a number of artist personas and types of work and then sent examples of these to commercial galleries, where the first to gain a positive response was Bob and Roberta Smith.
Patrick Brill paints slogans in a unique brightly coloured lettering style on banners and discarded boards of wood and exhibits them in galleries of contemporary art across the world. The slogans are usually humorous musing on art, politic, popular culture, Britain and the world in general and they often support his activist campaigns, such as his 2002 amnesty on bad art at Perogi Gallery, New York. A recent example of his gift for merging art & politics was illustrated in the exhibition Peace Camp. Bob & Roberta Smith took part in and curated the show held at The Brick Lane Gallery - the show & programme of events explored artists perceptions on Peace. The exhibition featured over 100 artists including Gavin Turk, Rebecca Taber, Wolfgang Tillmans, Abby Jackson and Seb Patene.
Noted for sign painting, Bob and Roberta Smith also make sculpture using cement, as in his 2005 Cement Soup Kitchen at Beaconsfield Gallery, London.[1]
"[Patrick Brill] grew attracted to postures of amateurism and failure. His more recent work has suggested an interest in the utopian impulse of art as an agent for social change, although this often seems hedged with doubt or irony" MORGAN FALCONER: "Bob and Roberta Smith" Grove Art Online. Oxford University Press, [2/10/06], [2]
Patrick Brill also performs music, often with a group known as The Ken Ardley Playboys. Brill also hosts The Bob & Roberta Smith Radio Show called MAKE YOUR OWN DAMN MUSIC which is on Resonance FM.
[edit] Recent Exhibitions
2007
- Peace Camp, The Brick Lane Gallery, London
2005/06
- The Beautiful Poetry of Bob and Roberta Smith, Hales Gallery, London
- Make Your Own Damn Art, Stanley Picker Gallery, Kingston, UK
2004
- Help Build The Ruins of Democracy, The Baltic
2003
- The Mobile Reality Creator, Compton Verney.
2002
- Its not easy being a famous Artist, Galerie Praz Delavallade, Paris,France.
- Useless men and Stupid Women, Anthony Wilkinson Gallery, London, UK.
- Bunch of Cowards, Collective Gallery, Edinburgh, UK.
- The New York Art Amnesty, Pierogi 2000, New York, USA.
- The Art Amnesty, Deptford X, London, UK
