Patrick Brill
Encyclopedia
Patrick Brill, better known by his pseudonym Bob and Roberta Smith (born 1963) is a British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
contemporary artist.
Life and work
Brill graduated from University of ReadingUniversity of Reading
The University of Reading is a university in the English town of Reading, Berkshire. The University was established in 1892 as University College, Reading and received its Royal Charter in 1926. It is based on several campuses in, and around, the town of Reading.The University has a long tradition...
, Brill was awarded a scholarship at The British School at Rome while still an undergraduate. Brill followed this with a MA
Master of Arts (postgraduate)
A Master of Arts from the Latin Magister Artium, is a type of Master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The M.A. is usually contrasted with the M.S. or M.Sc. degrees...
at Goldsmiths College
Goldsmiths College
Goldsmiths, University of London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom which specialises in the arts, humanities and social sciences, and a constituent college of the federal University of London. It was founded in 1891 as Goldsmiths' Technical and Recreative Institute...
, London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
.
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
Contemporary art
Contemporary art can be defined variously as art produced at this present point in time or art produced since World War II. The definition of the word contemporary would support the first view, but museums of contemporary art commonly define their collections as consisting of art produced...
across the world. The slogans are usually humorous musing on art
Art
Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....
, politics
Politics
Politics is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions. The term is generally applied to the art or science of running governmental or state affairs, including behavior within civil governments, but also applies to institutions, fields, and special interest groups such as the...
, popular culture
Popular culture
Popular culture is the totality of ideas, perspectives, attitudes, memes, images and other phenomena that are deemed preferred per an informal consensus within the mainstream of a given culture, especially Western culture of the early to mid 20th century and the emerging global mainstream of the...
, 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
Gavin Turk
Gavin Turk is a British artist and one of the Young British Artists . He often uses his own image in life-size sculptures of famous people.-Life and work:...
, Rebecca Taber, Wolfgang Tillmans
Wolfgang Tillmans
Wolfgang Tillmans is a German Fine-art photographer and artist. His comprehensive and diverse body of work is distinguished by observation of his surroundings and an ongoing investigation of the photographic medium’s foundations. In 2000, Tillmans was the first photographer and also the first...
, Abby Jackson
Abby Jackson
Abby Jackson is a British artist, Stuckist painter, writer and art activist.-Life and work:Abby Jackson was born in North Devon and lives and works in London. She attended Somerset College of Art and studied advertising...
and Seb Patene.
Noted for sign painting, Bob and Roberta Smith also make sculpture
Sculpture
Sculpture is three-dimensional artwork created by shaping or combining hard materials—typically stone such as marble—or metal, glass, or wood. Softer materials can also be used, such as clay, textiles, plastics, polymers and softer metals...
using cement
Cement
In the most general sense of the word, a cement is a binder, a substance that sets and hardens independently, and can bind other materials together. The word "cement" traces to the Romans, who used the term opus caementicium to describe masonry resembling modern concrete that was made from crushed...
, as in his 2005 Cement Soup Kitchen at Beaconsfield Gallery, London.http://www.beaconsfield.ltd.uk/chronic_epoch.html
"[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], http://www.groveart.com/
Patrick Brill also performs music
Music
Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...
, often with a group known as The Ken Ardley Playboys, who had their first 45 released by Billy Childish
Billy Childish
Billy Childish is an English artist, painter, author, poet, photographer, film maker, singer and guitarist...
on his label Hangman Records
Hangman Records
Hangman Records is a British independent record label founded in 1986 by Billy Childish. It has released over 50 LP Records, including spoken word, experimental works and punk rock....
. Brill also hosts The Bob & Roberta Smith Radio Show called MAKE YOUR OWN DAMN MUSIC which is on Resonance FM
Resonance FM
Resonance 104.4 FM is a London based non-profit community radio station run by the London Musicians' Collective .The station is staffed by four permanent staff members, including programme controller Ed Baxter and over 300 volunteer technical and production staff.Until September 2007, ResonanceFM...
.
In March 2005 Bob and Roberta Smith was commissioned to act as curator on a series of five public art projects in the Thames Gateway
Thames Gateway
The Thames Gateway is an area of land stretching east from inner east London on both sides of the River Thames and the Thames Estuary. The area, which includes much brownfield land, has been designated a national priority for urban regeneration, taking advantage of the development opportunities...
area of Essex
Essex
Essex is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the East region of England, and one of the home counties. It is located to the northeast of Greater London. It borders with Cambridgeshire and Suffolk to the north, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent to the South and London to the south west...
. The projects were collectively named Art U Need and were documented in a diary-format book by Smith in 2007.
Patrick Brill teaches at the Sir John Cass Department of Art, Media and Design, London Metropolitan University.
A sculpture proposed by Bob and Roberta Smith was shortlisted for the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square
Trafalgar Square
Trafalgar Square is a public space and tourist attraction in central London, England, United Kingdom. At its centre is Nelson's Column, which is guarded by four lion statues at its base. There are a number of statues and sculptures in the square, with one plinth displaying changing pieces of...
, London http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/exhibitions/fourthplinth/default.htm.
Exhibitions
2009- Altermoden, Tate Triennial exhibition, Tate Britain, London
2008
- Tate Christmas Tree, Tate Britain, London
- Fourth Plinth, The National Gallery, London http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/exhibitions/fourthplinth/default.htm
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
- Should I Stay Or Should I Go? (Dilemmas For Margate), Margate High Street, Turner Contemporary
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