
Mr Simon Faithful
Lecturer
Slade School of Fine Art University College London
London WC1E 6BT
Research Summary
Simon Faithfull's work explores the extremities of the world and its relation to the everyday or mundane. In July 2009 his exhibition at British Film Institute brought together his Escape Vehicle series including the journey of a domestic chair as it travelled to the edge of space beneath a weather balloon. 2010 saw the completion of his Liverpool to Liverpool public art work: a journey by containership to Liverpool, Nova Scotia documented in 181 drawings permanently etched into the paving and glass of a new public space in Liverpool, UK, and 2011 saw the launch of Limbo his web-based artwork and iPhone App which presents and delivers his collection of digital drawings live.
Past work includes Antarctica Dispatches (daily drawings dispatched 'live' from Antarctica), Fake Moon, a nightly intervention at the Big Chill festival and the short film, 13 (commissioned by Channel 4 and Arts Council England).
Exhibitions
Secret Satellites
2011BELFAST EXPOSED PHOTOGRAPHY, The Exchange Place, 23 Donegall Street, Belfast, BT1 2FF, Northern Ireland
Exhibition of work by 4 artists which explores our connection to space and the orbital environment.
Going Nowhere: Simon Faithfull
2011Parker's Box 193 Grand St. Brooklyn, NY 11211, USA
An exhibition bringing together two recent works: 0º00 Navigation and Going Nowhere 2 as well proposals and drawings.
Lines Fiction
2011Fruehsorge | Galerie für Zeichnung | Contemporary Drawings, Heidestr. 46-52 (Gebäude 6) 10557 Berlin, Germany
A group exhibition bringing together the work of 6 artists who work with drawing and animation.
Several Interruptions: 15 Years of the Slade Centre for Electronic Media in Fine Art
2011North Lodge, Gower Street, UCL
Seven, sequential solo presentations to celebrate 15 years of the Slade Centre for Electronic Media in Fine Art in 2011. Exhibited: 'Each Long Second' 2006, A0 photocopies, tape. Dimensions: 880 X 850 cms.
Liverpool to Liverpool
2010Liverpool Lime St Station, Lime Street Liverpool, UK L1 1JD, UK
Traveling by container-ship, train and bus, 181 digital drawings record the daily details of a journey from Liverpool (UK) to Liverpool (Nova Scotia). Making an average of six drawings a day, the minutia and randomness of travel is described in a way that builds to become an elliptic graphic essay - describing the dislocation of one person along the historic paths of trade and exodus. The permanent public A permanent artwork for the city of Liverpool was unveiled in 2010 - the drawings etched into the paving and glass of a new public site at the centre of Liverpool (UK).
Simon Faithfull: Recent Findings
2010Harris Museum and Art Gallery Market Square Preston Lancashire PR1 2PP, UK
A survey exhibition bringing together a body of work by Simon Faithfull from the last 10 years.
Voyages Extraordinaires - Simon Faithfull & Christoph Keller
2010CRAC Alsace, France
Two parallel solo exhibitions presenting the work of two artists who use travel and exploration as themes within their practice.
Gravity Sucks
2009British Film Institute Gallery, 21 Stephen Street London W1T 1LN, UK
An exhibition that brings together for the first time the complete Escape Vehicles series - made over a period of 10 years from 1995 - 2006.
Wunderland
2009SKULPTURENPARK BERLIN_ZENTRUM KUNSTrePUBLIK e.V. Köpenicker Str. 36-38 10179 Berlin, Germany
Mobile Research Station no.1 - one of six sculpture commissions for the Skulpturenpark Berlin Centrum.
Schwerelos
2009Haus am Waldsee, Ort Internationaler Gegenwartskunst, Argentinische Allee 30, 14163 Berlin, Germany
In Transit: Launch of the Love/Hate Arts Trail
2008North Kensington, London
Simon Faithfull - Video Works
2008Galerie Polaris, Paris
An exhibition bringing together three video works by the artist Simon Faithfull.
Ice Blink
2006Parker's Box 193 Grand St. Brooklyn, NY 11211, USA
An exhibition presenting the body of work made on a two month journey to Antarctica traveling with the British Antarctic Survey on an Arts Council fellowship.
Ice Blink
2006Cell Project Space, 258 Cambridge Heath Road, London E2 9DA, UK
An exhibition presenting the body of work made on a two month journey to Antarctica traveling with the British Antarctic Survey on an Arts Council fellowship.
Ice Blink
2006Stills Gallery, Edinburgh
An exhibition presenting the body of work made on a two month journey to Antarctica traveling with the British Antarctic Survey on an Arts Council fellowship.
Antarctica Despatches
2004Centre for Contemporary Art, Glasgow
30km
2004Aspex Gallery, Portsmouth, UK
Video installation of the work '30km' - the video footage recording a journey from a face to the edge of space.
Hybrid
2003Art Space, Imperial College London
Bag Lady
2003Cell Project Space, London
30km
2003Wollaton Hall, Nottingham
Art for the people (a collaborative project)
2003www.marketforces.org
Dreamland
2003Turner Centre, Margate, Kent
The Map is Not The Territory III
2003James Hockey Gallery, Surrey Institute of Art and Design, Surrey
Publications
King's Cross, A Pictorial Guide (Unreliable)
Using the style of the Alfred Wainwright’s pictorial guides to the Lakeland Fells Pictorial Guide to Kings Cross (Unreliable) is book that describes a walk not through the scenic and romantic landscape of the Lake District but through the tatty, historic and sometimes seedy environs of Kings Cross. The guide is an entirely subjective, idiosyncratic (and therefore somewhat unreliable) account of the area from one person’s limited perspective. The book describes a walk that starts at the Slade School of Fine Art (the artist’s current employer) and meanders its way slowly towards the new building of Central St Martins art school (the artist’s Alma Mater). The book uses the author’s idiosyncratic pixilated drawings, hand drawn maps and anecdotal writing to describe a flavor of a small part of London.
An Expanding Atlas of Subjectivity
An artwork in the form of a bespoke hand-sewn bookwork. Wandering the world over the last 11 years, Simon Faithfull has consistently made drawings on an electronic device that record his presence in a particular place, at a particular moment, somewhere on the surface of the planet. Whenever a new drawing is made it is now immediately dispatched out to the world via the Limbo drawing service but it is also automatically added to an ever-growing, online database. Each version of An Expanding Atlas of Subjectivity is a paper archive that captures one particular moment from this database. Each time a new book is ordered the latest drawings are always added so that no two books will ever be the same. The bookwork makes physical the body of work that has accreted over these years - manifesting a personal atlas of the world, mapping time and space, as experienced by one individual, on an ongoing basis.
Far Field
Digital Culture, Climate Change, and the Poles Jane Marsching, Andrea Polli. First published in the UK in 2012 by Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK First published in the ... ISBN 978-1-84150-478-0 EISBN 978-1-84150-659-3 Printed and bound by Latimer Trend & Company Ltd, Plymouth.
Macht
Catalogue for the exhibition: Macht (Rohkunstbau XVIII) in Schloss Marquardt (Potsdam-Marquardt)
A brief history of working with new media art
This book of interviews tracks the work of artists in the field of new media art in order to consider the massive changes and developments over a relatively short period of time. They are also a celebration of the ten years that the online resource for curators of new media art, CRUMB, has been publishing interviews and other research. The artists featured in this book range across the contemporary arts. They have been working away, not in the centre or the periphery, but in the nodes of this networked field of new media art.
Liverpool-to-Liverpool
Liverpool to Liverpool tells the story of an epic journey by Simon Faithfull from Liverpool, UK, to Liverpool, Novia Scotia. Faithfull made about six drawings a day throughout his journey, documenting the minutiae of daily life on land and sea, from Liverpool to Liverpool, with his Palm Pilot. This book includes 181 digital drawings, and Faithfull’s often wry, imagist commentary on the landscapes he was passing through and the humans he encountered – from English Liverpudlians crouched under umbrellas to Canadian Liverpudlians with moustachioed lips and pick-up trucks – as he drew them.
Skulpturenpark Berlin-Zentrum
A survey of the projects commissioned for Skulpturenpark Berlin-Zentrum between 2006 - 2010
There is no Road: The Road is Made by Walking
Catalogue for the exhibition: There is no Road: The Road is Made by Walking
Going Nowhere
This publication highlights a number of Simon Faithfull’s journeys; all of which take us, in one way or other, to the edge of nothingness. Charted with images from the projects, including video-stills, photographs and Faithfull’s own trademark drawings, the journeys are evocatively retraced in four specially commissioned essays by Robert Macfarlane, Alain de Botton, Philip Hoare and Lisa Le Feuvre, plus an introduction by Steven Bode. Emphasising the pivotal place of film and video within Faithfull’s practice, ‘Going Nowhere’ is an indispensable point of entry into this artist’s distinctive and inventive work.
Deep North
Catalogue for Deep North, Transmediale
Intemperie, Il Bienal del Fin del Mundo
Catalogue for the Bienale: Il Bienal del Fin del Mundo, Ushuaia, Argentina
Accident book
Bipolar
New Forest Pavilion: 52nd La Biennale di Venezia
Catalogue for the: New Forest Pavilion: 52nd La Biennale di Venezia
Think with the senses, feel with the mind
La Biennale di Venezia. esposizione internationale #39;arte, Robert Storr ... Marketing and Sponsorship Francesco di Cesare Marzia Cervellin Paola Pavan President's office and General Manager's office ... La Biennale di Venezia Ca' Giustinian San Marco 1364/a 30124 Venezia www.labiennale.org isbn 978-88- 317-9256 ...
Gravity sucks (Kittinger)
Ice blink: an Antarctic Essay
Travelling to Antarctica on RSS Ernest Shackleton from RAF Brize Norton via Ascension Island and the Falklands, Simon Faithfull recorded the displaced and disorienting world he encountered by filming the view out of his cabin porthole and with daily Palm Pilot drawings, transmitted each day to email inboxes around the world. Combined with diary entries and notes, these drawing and films have been incorporated into a series of lectures presented in Edinburgh, Helsinki, Norwich, Berlin and London.
Lost
Lost is a sculpture made with the ghosts of absent objects, an inventory of missing things. Over a period of 39 years many things have been lost but continue or continued to exist in the world without their former owner. A simple but extensive inventory, Lost is a book that catalogues these objects and the strange stories of their individual departures. In June 2006, Lost was deliberately left around the town of Whitstable, on the south-east coast of England. The publication appeared each day on benches, in pubs, by the seashore and on the various forms of public transport that were leaving the area (trains, planes and buses). The 500 copies of Lost distributed around Whitstable were individually numbered and finders were encouraged to record their discovery on a website before releasing the book back into the world. To see the paths that this first release of books made through space and time please visit www.simonfaithfull.org/lost
Terrestrial Investigation #256
Ideas, Vol.1
A small selection of plausible/implausible suggestions.
13 Messages
Liverpool-to-Liverpool: Chronicles of an aimless journey | Simon Faithful
A performative lecture describing one persons displacement along lines of trade and exodus.
Gravity Sucks
A performative lecture discussing man's often tragic lust to escape the shackles of gravity.
Arts, Media and Climate Change
The public perception of climate change is strongly influenced by the media and the arts, including the work of filmmakers, photographers, cartoonists, etc. Climate change is a showcase for notable differences in public perception between Europe and USA – both in terms of the understanding of climate change science and its causes, and of the actions that ought to be taken. This symposium aims to examine the shaping of perceptions of climate change within Europe and the United States, and ask: ‘what is the role of the media and the arts in determining this perception and enabling an appropriate response to climate change?’
POLAR: The Art and Science of Climate Change
The Art of Travel
Alain de Botton and Simon Faithfull gave papers discussing the nature of travel and how the journey is utilized in art.
Escape Vehicle no.6
Presentation of video artwork Escape Vehicle no.6 as part of the ESA conference in Berlin http://www.congrex.nl/07a04/spaceart.asp
BFI Gallery Book
Landscapes of Exploration
The Role of Contemporary Art in Antarctica
Land
Arte da Antartida
Day After Day
Overview of exhibitions at Kunsthalle Fribourg, Switzerland
Round up Panel: Exhibition meets Symposium
Tracing Mobility was a symposium exploring different perspectives between global and individual mobility, between physical and virtual movement: How do we navigate in the digital age, where are online and offline world are rapidly moving? How important is actual movement in space if we can reach any point on earth using digital technology? To what extent do the new mobile media alter our perception and our way of thinking?