Associate Studio Programme 6 : Simeon Barclay

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Feb 2020
After offering Simeon a customary brew of Yorkshire tea, I welcomed a fellow northern native into the studio. I first came across Simeon’s work in the art now room at Tate Modern a few years ago, the artists’ wall bio catching my eye as it mentioned his home town, Huddersfield, which is also my own. Not knowing a contemporary practicing artist from my own locality up until this moment, I was struck by the codes embedded in his mixed-media installation, the stripes of blue and white UV lights pulling on the homebound shirt colours of the Huddersfield football club. Witnessing his layered sculptural structures first hand, I was moved by the immense construction of the frames More...

Associate Studio Programme 5 : Simeon Barclay

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Jan 2019
Simeon Barclay came down from Leeds for an evening to discuss both his own practice, and talk through our current lines of inquiry in the studio. Simeon started the evening by describing his beginnings and the roots of his career. As the son of a tailor who had an early education working in metalworking and manufacturing, we talked through the importance of materiality, how the relationship between the two labour roles, of ‘worker’ and ‘artist’, is often seen as a rigid dichotomy and how this influenced his concerns as an artist. The More...