Simon Bedwell

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Selected works by Simon Bedwell

Untitled (Life After Liberalism)
Simon Bedwell
Untitled (Life After Liberalism)

2004



55 x 84 cm

Some of the posters have had their transient commercial directives so intertwined with the artist’s fictional and material alterations that it is impossible to tell where the original ends and the mutation begins.

Untitled (Brains)
Simon Bedwell
Untitled (Brains)

2003

Spray paint on found poster

79.2 x 59.5 cm

Whilst destroying the quick-hit, constantly shifting message of this ephemeral material, Simon Bedwell also saves it, giving it new weight and an object-quality that meanwhile retains an echo of the familiar.

Untitled (Croatia)
Simon Bedwell
Untitled (Croatia)

2004

Spray paint on poster

89 x 63 cm

Using ClipArt and WordArt software, available to almost anybody with a computer, Simon Bedwell’s posters combine found pictures with words and phrases, real and invented.

Untitled (Forgetkult)
Simon Bedwell
Untitled (Forgetkult)

2003

Spray paint on found poster

43 x 62.3 cm
Simon Bedwell
Untitled (Come to London)

2004

Spray paint on found poster on aluminium

64.3 x 49.3 cm
Simon Bedwell
Untitled (Eliteratti)

2004

Spray paint, acrylic and collage on paper

121.5 x 152 cm
Simon Bedwell
Untitled (Exhibition)

2004

Spray paint on found poster

43.7 x 55.5 cm
Simon Bedwell
Untitled (Festival)

2004

Spray paint on found poster

96 x 135 cm
Simon Bedwell
Untitled (Freud Museum)

2004

Spray paint on found poster

127 x 99.7 cm
Simon Bedwell
Untitled (Marli Renfro Centre)

2003

Spray paint on found poster

139.5 x 100 cm
Simon Bedwell
Untitled (Struggl)

2003

Spray paint and acrylic on paper

121.5 x 152.3 cm
Simon Bedwell
Untitled (Tate Jamaica)

2003

Spray paint on found poster

89 x 63 cm
Simon Bedwell
Untitled (The Rich..)

2004

Spray paint on found poster on aluminium

52 x 74.5 cm
Simon Bedwell
Untitled (Your Worst Fear)

2004

Spray paint on found poster

75 x 55.5 cm
Liffosucter
Simon Bedwell
Liffosucter

2004

Oil, acrylic and spraypaint on canvas

158 x 213 cm

As in much of Simon Bedwell’s work, a wide range of visual material, from promotional blurbs to local newspaper headlines, from ’50s photography to Communist Bloc advertising, combines to shape the final images.

Simon Bedwell
Proposed Suburban Monument

2004

Oil and acrylic on canvas

207 x 165 cm

Simon Bedwell is best known for his hand-manipulated trashed posters and photographs, using text and spray-paint to generate esoteric, strangely poignant or crass comedic fusions of word and image.

Simon Bedwell
Capitulator

2004

Acrylic on canvas

158.5 x 213.5 cm

Simon Bedwell draws on the visual vernacular of the streets, employing the cheap and throwaway nostalgia of posters scavenged from billboards, bargain bins and thrift stores as raw materials to fragment, divert and elaborate the original meaning into absurd compositions, poetic narratives and sardonic allegories of power.

Simon Bedwell
Untitled Exhibition

2004

Spraypaint on found poster

60.2 x 43.8 cm
Simon Bedwell
Untitled (Exhibition)

2004

Spray paint on found poster

60.7 x 43.2 cm
Simon Bedwell
Untitled (exhibition)

2004

Spray paint on found poster

60.7 x 43.2 cm
Simon Bedwell
Untitled (Exhibition)

2004

Spray paint on poster

42.1 x 62 cm
Simon Bedwell
Untitled (Exhibition)

2004

Spray paint on found posters

60.7 x 43.8 cm
Simon Bedwell
Untitled (Exhibition)

2004

Spray paint on found poster

60.2 x 43.8 cm

Simon Bedwell's Biography

Simon Bedwell
Born in Croydon in 1963
Lives and works in London

From 1991-2002 worked almost exclusively under the name BANK, a studio-based collaborative practice. Since 2003 he has been working as a solo artist.


SOLO EXHIBITIONS


2009
Painter of the Hole, MOT International, London
Asphalt World, Studio Voltaire, London

2007
The Receivers, MOT International, London
The Furnishers, White Room, White Columns, New York

2006
The Researchers, Byam Shaw School of Art gallery, London

2005
The Adverts, Rental, Los Angeles
Gents: A Melodrama with 2 Acts, Platform, London
Simon Bedwell, Ritter/Zamet, London

2004
Advertising Doesn’t Tell Anyone Anything Anyway. Piccadilly Circus Underground station concourse, Platform for Art, London


GROUP EXHIBITIONS


2018
Black Mirror: Art as a Social Satire, Saatchi Gallery, London

2016
In a Dream I Saw a Way to Survive and I Was Full of Joy, Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester

2014
First and Last Men Ha Gamle, Stavanger, Norway
Paradigm Store Howick Place, London

2013
The Banquet Years:Relics and Archives, Mgk Elaine, Basel
The Banquet Years Motinternational, London

2012
The Weight of Living Motinternational, London
Writer in Residence Ormeston House, Limerick, Eire
To Start with, Let's Remove the Colour, Temple Bar Gallery, Dublin, Eire
Bank Self Portrait: Relics and Archives Treize, Paris

2011
The Hole the Hole, London
Cabaret Ramin Barquet, New York
We Are Grammar Pratt Manhattan Gallery, New York

2010
La Belle Dame Sans Merci Vagas Gallery. London
So Be It: Interventions in Printed Matter Roth, New York
Gallery, Galerie, Galleria Norma Mangione Gallery, Turin
Tublic Service Announcement Invisible Exports, New York
East End Promise: Shoreditch 1985-2000, London
La Belle Dame sans Merci Vegas, London
Rude Brittannia: British Comic Art Tate Britain, London
Grand National: Art from Britain Vestfossen Kunstlaboratorium, Norway

2008
Other People’s Projects, White Columns, New York

2007
Last Of The Urgents, Colony Gallery, Birmingham
Second Life, Portman Gallery, London
Oliver Twist, Rental, New York

2006
Bring The War Home, Elizabeth Dee Gallery, New York
Bring The War Home, QED Gallery, Los Angeles
I Am The Fly Franc-Paca, Marseilles
Pimps and Hookers 1000000mph, London
Simon/Sarah, Platform, London
Right on/Write Off, Chapman Fine Arts, London

2005
Paintings without Painters, Painters without Paintings, Orchard, New York
England Their England, Laden Fur Nicht, Leipzig
Post No Bills, White Columns, New York
Brit Povera, Gallerie Krinzinger, Vienna
Shouting At the Television (interview with Mustafa Halusi) online project

2004
Galleon and other Stories, Saatchi Gallery, London
Bech Futures 5, ICA, London and CCA, Glasgow
Grate Britain, Cell, London
Slimvolume 5, Redux, London
The Sound Of The Crowd, Ritter/Zamet, London
Tonight, Studio Voltaire, London