Stuart Semple
Encyclopedia
Stuart Semple is a contemporary British artist and curator, based in London and Dorset. Semple's practice addresses ideas sparked by immersion in popular culture and combines contemporary figurative painting with pop art.
, Dorset
. He has a sister called Victoria. He studied Advanced Art and Design at Poole
, and Painting and Printmaking at Bretton Hall College in Yorkshire
. In 2000 Semple nearly died from a peanut allergy
This experience gave him the motivation to dedicate his time to painting. In 2004, art dealer Anthony d'Offay
flew his portfolio to New York. In 2005 Semple was appointed to the Design and Artist's Copyright Society creators’ council. Semple has spoken for The Institute of Ideas and in 2010 spoke for Jerwood Visual Arts. In 2011 he presented for the BBC's Art & Design series
each night at a set time creating an early online community.
In 2001 he had his first major London show at the A&D Gallery. It was called Stolen Language – the art of Nancyboy. It incorporated fragments and images that he identified with within popular culture and remixed into a personal narrative consisting of large paintings, screen prints, t-shirts and panels. 10 final nancyboy's were created in 2009 and auctioned once again via eBay
with all proceeds donated to the UK charity Mind
.
Semple created a memorial artwork RIP YBA with debris collected from the 2004 Momart
warehouse fire. Semple packaged them in 8 plastic boxes under the title Burn Baby Burn. The boxes had slogans in pink lettering, including "RIP YBA", which referred to the Young British Artists
, by whom much of the destroyed work had been created. Semple stated that amongst the debris collected there were fragments of Tracey Emin
's artwork, Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963–1995 ("the tent").
In 2005 Semple produced an exhibition of his works in an abandoned warehouse in London
, England, called Post Pop Paradise. Also that year he included a painting into the Saatchi Gallery
which included the words "British Painting Still Rocks" as reaction to Charles Saatchi
's comments that the YBA artists would be nothing more than a footnote in the history of art.
In 2006 Semple exhibited "pop" inspired paintings in the solo show, "Epiphany" at Martin Summers Fine Art in London.
and is initiating a Creative Therapies fund within the organization. Semple also supported MTV's Re:Define exhibition at The Goss-Michael Foundation in 2011 with auction proceeds donated to MTV Staying Alive
Foundation which enables inspirational youngsters to fight HIV and AIDS in their local communities. He has also supported the Africa Foundation via Art for Africa with Sotheby's, Macmillan De'Longhi Art Auction at Bonhams and the medical foundation Freedom From Torture's art auction. In 2011 Semple will be featured on postcards for the Anaphylaxis campaign and has created artworks for the Freedom of Expression Campaign for Amnesty International.
and 'London Loves The Way Things Fall Apart' (2009) and "This Is England" (2011) for Galleria Aus18, Milan.
Semple's exploration of British cultural themes have also been seen in the exhibition "This Is England" (2010) initially held at The Aubin Gallery which he directs in association with Aubin Wills and Shorditch House featuring artists Sarah Maple
, Nicky Carvell, David Hancock
and Richard Galloway
In 2011 Semple curated the Mindful exhibition in 25,000 sqft Old Vic Tunnels featuring artists including Jake and Dinos Chapman
, Tracey Emin
, Mona Hatoum
, Mat Collishaw
, Sebastian Horsley
, Sarah Lucas
, Barney Bubbles
, Liliane Lijn
, Tessa Farmer
and Semple himself. It coincided with a gala dinner at The Imperial War Museum hosted by Stephen Fry
and Lord Melvyn Bragg
to raise funds for the Mind creative therapies fund and explore the relationship between creativity and mental health.
In 2007, when interviewed for Trebuchet Magazine Stuart describes how his early experience of pop influenced his approach to art "When I was growing up in the 80s these things (cultural icons) were - I don’t know if it’s quite right to say they were aspirational, but they certainly gave me my first feelings of something larger. But as you get older you get more jaded so now when you look back at these ‘nostalgic’ things, you have lost something. Here I’ve tried to look at them again in such as way as to rediscover that sense of feeling"
In an interview with Doug McClemont he purports to the mimetic industries of mass-production; which has been a running critique in Semple's work. He discussed the "idea of taking the mechanization out the pop stuff. Because I find a lot of it non-emotive." He also alluded more to his studio practice; "I used to paint alone when I had a tiny studio middle of nowhere. It had mice and was freezing. Now I have assistants who help me paint, because I'm doing massive, massive stuff, right now. It's not the same..."
Eric Bryant debated Stuart Semple and contemporary Pop Art
in a seminal ARTnews
feature 50 years after Richard Hamilton
had defined the movement. "While earlier generations of Pop artists exhibited a similar love-hate relationship with consumer culture and glamour, this group takes on fear and violence." Semple's relationship with current culture, politics and imagery has put him at the forefront of the next generation of debate, where artists now tackle the current climate of fear; "his often disturbing, even sinister works also feature guns, pills, and frequent references to suicide."
Life and career
Stuart Semple was born in BournemouthBournemouth
Bournemouth is a large coastal resort town in the ceremonial county of Dorset, England. According to the 2001 Census the town has a population of 163,444, making it the largest settlement in Dorset. It is also the largest settlement between Southampton and Plymouth...
, Dorset
Dorset
Dorset , is a county in South West England on the English Channel coast. The county town is Dorchester which is situated in the south. The Hampshire towns of Bournemouth and Christchurch joined the county with the reorganisation of local government in 1974...
. He has a sister called Victoria. He studied Advanced Art and Design at Poole
Poole
Poole is a large coastal town and seaport in the county of Dorset, on the south coast of England. The town is east of Dorchester, and Bournemouth adjoins Poole to the east. The Borough of Poole was made a unitary authority in 1997, gaining administrative independence from Dorset County Council...
, and Painting and Printmaking at Bretton Hall College in Yorkshire
Yorkshire
Yorkshire is a historic county of northern England and the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its great size in comparison to other English counties, functions have been increasingly undertaken over time by its subdivisions, which have also been subject to periodic reform...
. In 2000 Semple nearly died from a peanut allergy
Allergy
An Allergy is a hypersensitivity disorder of the immune system. Allergic reactions occur when a person's immune system reacts to normally harmless substances in the environment. A substance that causes a reaction is called an allergen. These reactions are acquired, predictable, and rapid...
This experience gave him the motivation to dedicate his time to painting. In 2004, art dealer Anthony d'Offay
Anthony d'Offay
Anthony d'Offay is a British art dealer, he closed his gallery - Anthony d’Offay Gallery - in 2002.-Life and career:...
flew his portfolio to New York. In 2005 Semple was appointed to the Design and Artist's Copyright Society creators’ council. Semple has spoken for The Institute of Ideas and in 2010 spoke for Jerwood Visual Arts. In 2011 he presented for the BBC's Art & Design series
Early Works
Semple took the persona of "nancyboy" after his near death experience and produced over 3000 works of art between 2000 and 2003 that were sold via eBayEBay
eBay Inc. is an American internet consumer-to-consumer corporation that manages eBay.com, an online auction and shopping website in which people and businesses buy and sell a broad variety of goods and services worldwide...
each night at a set time creating an early online community.
In 2001 he had his first major London show at the A&D Gallery. It was called Stolen Language – the art of Nancyboy. It incorporated fragments and images that he identified with within popular culture and remixed into a personal narrative consisting of large paintings, screen prints, t-shirts and panels. 10 final nancyboy's were created in 2009 and auctioned once again via eBay
EBay
eBay Inc. is an American internet consumer-to-consumer corporation that manages eBay.com, an online auction and shopping website in which people and businesses buy and sell a broad variety of goods and services worldwide...
with all proceeds donated to the UK charity Mind
Mind
The concept of mind is understood in many different ways by many different traditions, ranging from panpsychism and animism to traditional and organized religious views, as well as secular and materialist philosophies. Most agree that minds are constituted by conscious experience and intelligent...
.
Semple created a memorial artwork RIP YBA with debris collected from the 2004 Momart
Momart
Momart is a British company specialising in the storage, transportation, and installation of works of art. It has been owned by Falkland Islands Holdings since 5 March 2008....
warehouse fire. Semple packaged them in 8 plastic boxes under the title Burn Baby Burn. The boxes had slogans in pink lettering, including "RIP YBA", which referred to the Young British Artists
Young British Artists
Young British Artists or YBAs is the name given to a loose group of visual artists who first began to exhibit together in London, in 1988...
, by whom much of the destroyed work had been created. Semple stated that amongst the debris collected there were fragments of Tracey Emin
Tracey Emin
Tracey Karima Emin RA is a British artist of English and Turkish Cypriot origin. She is part of the group known as Britartists or YBAs ....
's artwork, Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963–1995 ("the tent").
In 2005 Semple produced an exhibition of his works in an abandoned warehouse in 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...
, England, called Post Pop Paradise. Also that year he included a painting into the Saatchi Gallery
Saatchi Gallery
The Saatchi Gallery is a London gallery for contemporary art, opened by Charles Saatchi in 1985 in order to exhibit his collection to the public. It has occupied different premises, first in North London, then the South Bank by the River Thames and currently in Chelsea. Saatchi's collection, and...
which included the words "British Painting Still Rocks" as reaction to Charles Saatchi
Charles Saatchi
Charles Saatchi is the co-founder with his brother Maurice of the global advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi, and led that business - the world's largest advertising agency in the 1980s - until they were forced out in 1995. In the same year the Saatchi brothers formed a new agency called M&C...
's comments that the YBA artists would be nothing more than a footnote in the history of art.
In 2006 Semple exhibited "pop" inspired paintings in the solo show, "Epiphany" at Martin Summers Fine Art in London.
Charitable Affiliations
In 2011 Stuart Semple was made an Ambassador for mental health charity MindMind
The concept of mind is understood in many different ways by many different traditions, ranging from panpsychism and animism to traditional and organized religious views, as well as secular and materialist philosophies. Most agree that minds are constituted by conscious experience and intelligent...
and is initiating a Creative Therapies fund within the organization. Semple also supported MTV's Re:Define exhibition at The Goss-Michael Foundation in 2011 with auction proceeds donated to MTV Staying Alive
MTV Staying Alive
Staying Alive is an MTV international initiative to encourage HIV prevention, promote safer lifestyle choices and fight the stigma and discrimination which fuels the HIV epidemic. Staying Alive is now the world’s largest HIV mass media awareness and prevention campaign...
Foundation which enables inspirational youngsters to fight HIV and AIDS in their local communities. He has also supported the Africa Foundation via Art for Africa with Sotheby's, Macmillan De'Longhi Art Auction at Bonhams and the medical foundation Freedom From Torture's art auction. In 2011 Semple will be featured on postcards for the Anaphylaxis campaign and has created artworks for the Freedom of Expression Campaign for Amnesty International.
Curatorial Projects
In 2007 Stuart Semple co-curated and featured in the 'Black Market' at the Anna Kustera gallery in New York with Just Another Rich Kid. Showcasing their collaborative installation piece 'Team Dream Chaos' depicting a provocative teenage girl's bedroom. Semple has curated exhibitions "Mash Ups, post pop fragments and détournements" at The Kowalsky Gallery in 2008 for the Design and Artists Copyright SocietyDesign and Artists Copyright Society
The Design and Artists Copyright Society is a UK not-for-profit rights management organisation that exists to collect and distribute royalties to visual artists....
and 'London Loves The Way Things Fall Apart' (2009) and "This Is England" (2011) for Galleria Aus18, Milan.
Semple's exploration of British cultural themes have also been seen in the exhibition "This Is England" (2010) initially held at The Aubin Gallery which he directs in association with Aubin Wills and Shorditch House featuring artists Sarah Maple
Sarah Maple
-Biography:Maple was born in 1985 to a Muslim mother and Christian raised father, and was raised as a Muslim. She studied Fine Art at Kingston University.In 2007 she won the "4 New Sensations" competition, run by Channel 4 in conjunction with the Saatchi Gallery...
, Nicky Carvell, David Hancock
David Hancock
David Hancock is a Canadian politician and current Member of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta representing the constituency of Edmonton-Whitemud as a Progressive Conservative.-Early life:...
and Richard Galloway
In 2011 Semple curated the Mindful exhibition in 25,000 sqft Old Vic Tunnels featuring artists including Jake and Dinos Chapman
Jake and Dinos Chapman
Iakovos "Jake" Chapman and Konstantinos "Dinos" Chapman are English visual artists, often known as the Chapman Brothers, who work together as a collaborative sibling duo...
, Tracey Emin
Tracey Emin
Tracey Karima Emin RA is a British artist of English and Turkish Cypriot origin. She is part of the group known as Britartists or YBAs ....
, Mona Hatoum
Mona Hatoum
Mona Hatoum is a video artist and installation artist of Palestinian origin, who lives in London.- Lebanon :...
, Mat Collishaw
Mat Collishaw
Matthew "Mat" Collishaw is an artist based in London, and one of the Young British Artists.-Career:Collishaw attended Goldsmiths, University of London , alongside Damien Hirst and other YBA artists....
, Sebastian Horsley
Sebastian Horsley
Sebastian Horsley was a London artist best known for having undergone a voluntary crucifixion. Horsley's writing often revolved around his dysfunctional family, his drug addictions, sex, and his reliance on prostitutes.-Background:Horsley was born in Holderness in the East Riding of Yorkshire...
, Sarah Lucas
Sarah Lucas
Sarah Lucas is an English artist. She is part of the generation of Young British Artists who emerged during the 1990s...
, Barney Bubbles
Barney Bubbles
Colin Fulcher aka Barney Bubbles was a radical English graphic artist, whose work primarily encompassed the disciplines of graphic design, painting and music video direction. He is most renowned for his distinctive contribution to the graphic design associated with the British independent music...
, Liliane Lijn
Liliane Lijn
Liliane Lijn , is a prominent American-born artist who was the first woman artist to work with kinetic text , exploring both light and text as early as 1962...
, Tessa Farmer
Tessa Farmer
Tessa Farmer is an artist based in London. Her work, made from insect carcasses, plant roots and other found natural materials, comprises hanging installations depicting Boschian battles between insects and tiny winged skeletal humanoids.She received her BA in 2000 and her MA in 2003 from The...
and Semple himself. It coincided with a gala dinner at The Imperial War Museum hosted by Stephen Fry
Stephen Fry
Stephen John Fry is an English actor, screenwriter, author, playwright, journalist, poet, comedian, television presenter and film director, and a director of Norwich City Football Club. He first came to attention in the 1981 Cambridge Footlights Revue presentation "The Cellar Tapes", which also...
and Lord Melvyn Bragg
Melvyn Bragg
Melvyn Bragg, Baron Bragg FRSL FRTS FBA, FRS FRSA is an English broadcaster and author best known for his work with the BBC and for presenting the The South Bank Show...
to raise funds for the Mind creative therapies fund and explore the relationship between creativity and mental health.
Philosophy
Stuart recently sent over 2000 happy clouds up into the sky over London and Milan to raise the mood and was quoted; “I know at times like this it’s easy to make creativity a low priority, but I want to show on a very human level that an artistic idea might be able to do something important, even for a fleeting moment.”In 2007, when interviewed for Trebuchet Magazine Stuart describes how his early experience of pop influenced his approach to art "When I was growing up in the 80s these things (cultural icons) were - I don’t know if it’s quite right to say they were aspirational, but they certainly gave me my first feelings of something larger. But as you get older you get more jaded so now when you look back at these ‘nostalgic’ things, you have lost something. Here I’ve tried to look at them again in such as way as to rediscover that sense of feeling"
In an interview with Doug McClemont he purports to the mimetic industries of mass-production; which has been a running critique in Semple's work. He discussed the "idea of taking the mechanization out the pop stuff. Because I find a lot of it non-emotive." He also alluded more to his studio practice; "I used to paint alone when I had a tiny studio middle of nowhere. It had mice and was freezing. Now I have assistants who help me paint, because I'm doing massive, massive stuff, right now. It's not the same..."
Eric Bryant debated Stuart Semple and contemporary Pop Art
Pop art
Pop art is an art movement that emerged in the mid 1950s in Britain and in the late 1950s in the United States. Pop art challenged tradition by asserting that an artist's use of the mass-produced visual commodities of popular culture is contiguous with the perspective of fine art...
in a seminal ARTnews
ARTnews
ARTnews is an arts magazine based in New York, founded by James Clarence Hyde in 1902 as Hyde’s Weekly Art News. It is published 11 times a year.ARTnews covers all art, from ancient to Post-modernism...
feature 50 years after Richard Hamilton
Richard Hamilton (artist)
Richard William Hamilton, CH was a British painter and collage artist. His 1956 collage, Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing?, produced for the This Is Tomorrow exhibition of the Independent Group in London, is considered by critics and historians to be one of the...
had defined the movement. "While earlier generations of Pop artists exhibited a similar love-hate relationship with consumer culture and glamour, this group takes on fear and violence." Semple's relationship with current culture, politics and imagery has put him at the forefront of the next generation of debate, where artists now tackle the current climate of fear; "his often disturbing, even sinister works also feature guns, pills, and frequent references to suicide."
Later Works
In 2007 Semple exhibited "Fake Plastic Love", an exhibition of billboard scale paintings housed within a blacked out environment of East London's Truman Brewery. In 2009 He held his first New York solo exhibition "Everlasting Nothing Less" at Anna Kustera Gallery involving large scale paintings and sculpture. "The Happy House", exhibited in London 2010 with Morton Metropolis built on themes explored in earlier collections, but for the first time touched on more personal than cultural issues. His self portrait 'A Pounding Outside Poundland' captures the moment of an assault.Exhibitions
Solo Exhibitions-
- 2010 'The Happy House' Morton Metropolis, London
- 2009 'Lipstick Vogue' CatStreet Gallery, Hong Kong
- 2009 'Everlasting Nothing Less' Anna Kustera, New York
- 2009 'Born To Run' Bari, Italy
- 2009 'Happy Cloud' London
- 2008 'Cult of Denim' Selfridges, London
- 2008 'Pop Disciple' Aus18, Milan
- 2007 'Fake Plastic Love' Truman Brewery & Martin Summers Fine Art, London
- 2006 'Epiphany' Martin Summers Fine Art, London
- 2005 'Post Pop Paradise' SKIT, London
- 2002 'Stolen Language - The Art of Nancyboy' A&D Gallery, London
- 2000 'Nancyboy Paintings' Pause, London
External links
- Stuart Semple website (requires Flash)
- Fake Plastic Love exhibition website website (requires Flash)
- Design And Copyright Society profile