Simon Coates (artist)
Simon Coates is a British mixed media artist, writer and curator.
About
Coates attended Plymouth College of Art, where he completed a course in Foundation Art. He went on to complete a degree in Fashion Design at Harrow College of Art, which became part of the University of Westminster in 1990.In Dubai in September 2015 he launched the Middle East's only sound art club night – Tse Tse Fly Middle East – with Ram Nath. Tse Tse Fly Middle East now features an artist collective, and produces and curates exhibitions and live events. Coates manages all Tse Tse Fly Middle East's artistic directions. Since January 2015 he has produced a monthly two-hour radio programme for UK station Resonance EXTRA. The programme features sound art, noise and experimental music from the Middle East, Africa and the Indian subcontinent. He also produced a five part radio series named Tse Tse Fly Further East that featured the sound art scenes in the following South East Asian countries: Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia, Vietnam and Loas and South Korea.
Between October 2013 and May 2015 Coates was General Manager of the Dubai Community Theatre and Arts Centre. During his time there Coates introduced an art commissioning programme, curated the UAE’s first-ever exhibition of sound art and project-managed an exhibition of work by Turner Prize winner Jeremy Deller. He art-directed DUCTAC’s 2014/15 season that commissioned theatre performances from comedian Trevor Noah, the Chicago Shakespeare Company, Indian playwright and poet Gulzar, the Moscow City Ballet, the acclaimed Hindi version of Twelfth Night, Piya Behrupiya and more.
Coates has also worked under the pseudonym A Taxi For My Uncle and as one half of the Visqueen experiments-in-noise duo. He has been a contributing writer for Harper’s Bazaar Art Arabia and Contemporary Practices magazines, among others.