Simon Faithfull
Simon Faithfull is an English artist based in Berlin and London. His work has been widely exhibited in both international solo and group exhibitions, including Musee des Beaux Arts, Fabrica, FRAC Basse Normandie, The British Film Institute Gallery, London; Haus am Waldsee, Berlin; CRAC Alsace, France, Stills, Edinburgh; and the 52nd Venice Biennale in 2007 as part of ArtSway's New Forest Pavilion.
Biography
Faithfull grew up at Braziers Park, the son of Major Robert Glynn Faithfull and his second wife, Margaret Elizabeth Faithfull, whom he had married in 1963. He was a half brother to singer and actress Marianne Faithfull through his father's first marriage.He was the first visual artist to receive an Arts Council England Fellowship to travel to Antarctica with the British Antarctic Survey. The journey began in November 2004 and lasted for two months. During this journey, Faithfull made daily drawings on a PalmPilot recording the daily events and sights of a journey ever further south. As with other drawing projects, these sketches were then relayed back to the world via email. In this case 3,000 people around the world received a live drawn message from end of the world.
Since 2000, Faithfull abandoned paper
He now makes his drawings using a bespoke iPhone app, Limbo.
Faithfull's practice often involves elements of failure and anti-heroism. His works revolve around research and experiments, and during the course of the past few years he has become known for his Lecture Performances that will often accompany his exhibitions. He is cited as trying to measure the world in order to check whether it exists and whether, when absent, he also still exists.
Journeys and traveling are central to his practice, whether it involves the end of the world, outer space, or a simple bike ride, they offer crucial material for Faithfull. Influences include Smithson and Richard Long.
In 2006, Faithfull released LOST, a book that catalogues the objects lost by the artist during the course of his lifetime, alongside the stories that accompany these losses. 500 of the books were left around Whitstable as part of an ongoing web project, as their finders are encouraged to record their discoveries before re-releasing them back into the world.
In a series of experiments conducted over ten years, Faithfull sought to defy gravity with his 'Escape vehicles'. Seven in total to date, these Escape Vehicles range from the use of balloons, chairs, insects, and rockets. Escape Vehicle no.6 saw a domestic chair travel from the Earth to the edge of space. An audience first witnessed the chair, tethered beneath a weather balloon, disappear into the sky and then watched a live video transmission from the vehicle showing the chair reaching an altitude of 30 km high. Seen against the blackness of space and the curvature of the Earth the chair finally broke up at the edge of space.
Since 2003, Faithfull has lectured at the Slade School of Fine Art. and is currently Reader in Fine Art.
Simon Faithfull is represented by Galerie Polaris, Paris.
Notable artworks
REEF, 2014
Reef saw Faithfull intentionally sink a boat called the Brioney Victoria off the coast of Southwest England. The boat was scuttled as a live event on 4 August 2014 with five cameras mounted onboard transmitting a live video stream of the boat making its final journey to the bottom of the sea. The video-work created from this event uses footage from these 5 cameras and documentation from a number of other vantage points, to tell the story of a process of transformation. The film presents the very beginning of a slow metamorphosis from defunct vessel at the end of its life, to the creation of an artificial reef – a process that will take further hundreds or even thousands of years to complete.EZY1899: Reenactment for a Future Scenario
This film depicts the Sisyphean efforts of a silver-suited commuter to board and fly in a monstrous rendition of a 1990s jet. The unreal vehicle is misshapen, blackened by fire and missing a wing, the craft will not fly, but the traveller undertakes his ritual of boarding and waiting for take-off whilst flames surround him. The work was commissioned by Tatton Park Biennial 2012, Flights of Fancy and was subsequently included in Risk at Turner Contemporary.Limbo Drawings/ An Expanding Atlas of Subjectivity, ongoing
Whenever Faithfull makes a new drawing it is immediately dispatched out to the world via the Limbo drawing service and automatically added to an ever-growing, online database which contains every drawing made by Faithfull since 2000.An Expanding Atlas of Subjectivity is a unique artwork in the form of a bespoke hand-sewn bookwork, a paper archive that captures one particular moment from this database. Each time a new book is ordered the latest drawings are added so each book is thicker than the last and no two books will ever be the same. The bookwork makes physical the body of drawings that has accreted over more than a decade – manifesting a personal atlas of the world, mapping time and space, as experienced by one individual, on an ongoing basis.
Faithfull periodically exhibits An Expanding Atlas of Subjectivity as a gallery installation during which the most recent drawings are added as and when they are made. Exhibitions to date have taken place in Lille, National Museum, Project Space, Berlin, and at Phoenix Arts in Leicester.
Mobile Research Station no.1, 2009
Mobile Research Station was a project commissioned by SKULPTURENPARK BERLIN_ZENTRUM in 2009, that took place in the centre of Berlin, between Seydelstr and Beuthstr. Half hi-tech Antarctic Research Station and half rusty broken-dumpster, this unit created by Faithfull provided a station for a group of artists/researchers to investigate the surrounding wilderness and urban zones in Berlin.Other researchers included Esther Polak, Aug Annika Lundgren, Martin John Callanan, Katie Paterson, Nick Crowe & Ian Rawlinson, Tim Knowles.
0º00 Navigation Part I, 2008 and 0º00 Navigation Part II, 2015
0º00 Navigation is a black and white film that shows an absurd journey made exactly along the Greenwich Meridian. Always seen from behind, a figure swims out of the seawater where the meridian hits the south-coast of Britain. The solitary person emerges from the water carrying a hand held GPS device. Using this implement the figure then proceeds to walk directly north along the 0º00 line of longitude. Any obstacle encountered is negotiated—fences climbed, properties crossed, buildings entered via nearest windows or apertures, streams waded, motorways traversed. The figure gradually makes its way up through southeast Britain, through London, the Midlands and ultimately where the line re-enters the water in the north of Britain the figure slowly swims away into the North Sea.Half a decade later Faithfull again traversed the Meridian Line, this time travelling south through Europe and Africa heading towards the exact centre of nowhere. 0º00 Navigation Part II, A Journey Across Europe and Africa premiered at The Edge in Bath and was subsequently presented in a solo exhibition at Sprinhornhof Kunstverein, Germany. A third and final journey tracing the Meridian line across the planet is planned by Faithfull; "Eventually he will run out of land and take to sea again, with the ultimate aim of standing on a raft at 0°, 0° where the meridian meets the equator off the coast of West Africa. "I'm not really a daredevil type", he says, "and I don't actually intend to put myself in danger. I just want to go to these places, partly to see if they really exist".