Simon Bill

Simon Bill (born 1958, Kingston-upon-Thames) is a contemporary English visual artist who lives and works in Sheffield. He studied art at Saint Martin's School of Art in London from 1977–1980 and at The Royal College of Art, also in London, from 1982-1985.[1] His work is in the public collection of the Leeds City Art Gallery.[2]

Working practice

Bill has almost exclusively exhibited oval paintings on plywood or MDF board, each measuring 127 cm / 97 cm / 5 cm. The subjects of his work are as varied as the materials he uses to create them, which include oil, acrylic, spray, day-glo, blackboard, and glass paints, as well as parcel string, gaffer tape, silicon, permanent markers, various types of foam, emulsion, corn, PVA, foil, fabric swatches, wood stains, hair, yacht varnish, modeling paste, drilled holes, fake gems, polystyrene, and wool.

Writing in Frieze, in 1994, the art critic Jeffrey Kastner said,

"You’ve got to wonder about Simon Bill. He paints large, wickedly distorted portraits of former British icons - such as Mr Blobby and the little squeezy-toy Troll guy - in a pastily translucent mixture of oil and dirty wax, like serendipitously congealed puddles of corrupted bodily fluids. These monumentally ugly paintings are so studiously unpleasant, so fuck-you disgusting that they don’t so much red-line the shock meter as overload it entirely. While his works rely on a certain warped nostalgia for their subjects, Bill isn’t attempting in any meaningful way to postpone their interment in the pop culture graveyard. In fact, his whole plan relies on them spending at least some time down among the worms. He prefers to wait for the rot to set in a bit before digging them up and performing his malevolent reanimations on them." [3]

Exhibitions

Solo exhibitions include The Loved One (2008) at Patrick Painter Inc. in Santa Monica, California, Odd (2007) at Figge von Rosen Galerie, Cologne, Germany, Oooh! (2006) at Stuart Shave/Modern Art in London, OOO! (oval paintings) (2006) at Outpost Gallery, in Norwich, and Three Painters: Simon Bill (2002) at The Cornerhouse in Manchester.[4]

References

  1. ↑ http://www.patrickpainter.com/artists/Bill_Simon/index.html
  2. ↑ http://www.artfacts.net/index.php/pageType/artistInfo/artist/11466/lang/1#Galleries
  3. ↑ Jeffrey Kastner, "Simon Bill: Cabinet Gallery," Frieze, November 2004
  4. ↑ Link to Bill bio as pdf Patrick Painter Gallery

External links