Simon Woolham
My work is concerned primarily with occupied spaces; school playing fields, junked underpasses and the like that often contain text with the tone of dialogue and the personal and collective narrative that unfolds in them. I explore layers of history, drawing out narrative, glimpses of speech. The dilapidated environments come to life in a skint version of enchantment: a tree stump or a broken fence, are filled with the meanings of the events that go on around and about them. At the core of my practice is the collaborative exploration and encouragement of hidden human details, shared histories, stories associated with belonging and the relationship to specific places and spaces; providing a voice to often unheard vistas of history.
I explore a variety of processes, specifically around expanded drawing and through the concept of creating a physical, virtual and psychological artistic residency of the mind, mixing live and digital platforms, encouraging narrative associated with a multitude of spaces and times. In my attempts to unearth this unpredictable and fragile process of layers of history, I utilise both traditional and non-traditional processes, biro drawings, sculpture, performance, paper interventions, animation, video, collaborative walking and text. I see the biro drawings as a way of performing layers of narrative in the present, through the act of drawing them out for both myself and for others. This is processed through how hard, how soft, how detailed and how vague I am, a representation of the layered spatial narrative plane.
The work is unassuming, quite often made from simple materials and with seemingly modest aspirations. It is their quotidian qualities, however, that charges them with emotion, not that those emotions are easy to identify. It is not that these works are personal or autobiographical that obscures their emotional content, it is the fact that they are irreducibly, irrevocably unsettling. These sites are the scenes of humiliation as well as innocent play, of rejection and failure as well as fantasy and adventure.
Education
2012–2016 Funded Practice-Led PhD, MIRIAD – Manchester Metropolitan University: Pass
1999–2000 MA Fine Art, Chelsea College of Art: Distinction
1996–1999 BA Fine Art, Manchester Metropolitan University: 2:1
Websites: www.insearchoftheshortcuts.com
PhD Title: Walking and narrative in physical, virtual and psychological space
Artistic programmerr at PAPER an artist run gallery in Manchester www.paper-gallery.co.uk
Selected Solo Exhibitions:
2019 - DRAWING OUT THE CANAL, Drawing Projects UK, Trowbridge
2018 - WALKING ROUTES: MAPPING AND PERFORMING HISTORIES Barnaby, Macclesfield
2017 - PAST/PRESENT/FUTURE NEW MILLS, New Mills Festival
2016 - In Search Of The Shortcuts, Art On Paper, BOZAR, Brussels, with PAPER
2016 - Walking Out From Home, Cresswell Crags and Wirksworth Festival, Derbyshire
2016 - TAKING BACK SPACE: The Macc Walks, Barnaby Festival, Macclesfield
2013 - The Wanderer, 20-21 Visual Arts Centre, Scunthorpe
2008 - Dark Corner, Margaret Harvey Gallery St Albans
2008 - The Invader, Chapter, Cardiff
2008 - The Short Cut, Kings Lynn Arts Centre, Norfolk
2007 - Our Place, BLOC Space, Sheffield
2007 - Shreds of Evidence, Museum of Garden History, Lambeth, London
2007 - The bridge was a good place to throw stuff off, Leicester City Art Gallery (Offsite), Leicester
2004 - Hanging Out at the Lamppost, The Lowry, Salford, Manchester
Selected Group Exhibitions:
2022 - Drawing In, Breathing Out (co-curated) ROGUE ARTISTS STUDIOS, Manchester
2019 - This Land is Our Land, PAPER, Manchester
2019 - INTER-SECTION, Market Gallery, Huddersfield
2019 - (Un)Staged, Leicester Print Workshop and PAPER, Manchester
2018 - Truth and Fantasy (curated by Martyn Lucas) Various Venues
2018 - like the lines of a hand Centre for Recent Drawing (C4RD), London
2017 - like the lines of a hand (curated by Simon Woolham) PAPER, Manchester
2017 - for space (curated by Simon Woolham) PAPER, Manchester
2015 - Sound & Vision, PAPER, Manchester
2015 - KÖLNER LISTE Art Fair, PAPER, Cologne
2015 - We shape our buildings: therefore they shape us, London Art Fair
2014 - Jonbar Archaeology, NN Contemporary Art, Northampton
2014 - Unstable Ground, PAPER, Manchester (Curated by Simon Woolham)
2014 - Soft Estate, Spacex, Exeter
2014 - Soft Estate, The Bluecoat, Liverpool
2013 - Fine Art Schools Group Show, Kunst Acacedmie, Dresden, Germany
2011 - In Close Succession, Norwich Arts Centre, Norwich
2010 - Re:Animate, Oriel Davies Gallery, Newtown, Powys
2010 - The Great Outdoors, Aspex Gallery, Portsmouth
2009 - Celebration of Earth Day, The Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena, USA
2009 - In Between the Lines, New British Drawing, Trinity Contemporary, London
2009 - Le Roman du Lievre: Marginalia, MTS Gallery (and Touring), Anchorage, Alaska
2009 - Project Pigeon, Pictorial, Curated by Alex Lockett and Ian England
2008 - Inside-Out, Wysing Arts Centre, Bourn, Cambridge
2008 - The Golden Record, Collective Gallery, Edinburgh
2008 - Group Show, Wysing Arts Centre, Bourne, Nr Cambridge
2006 - Snowdomes, National Glass Centre, Sunderland Intervention
2009 - TESTCARD Projeckt, Online, Online Residencies
Residencies, Commissions and Projects
2016 - D-LAB and Junction Arts Co-Commission of The Rural Routes: Walking Out From Home
2016 - DAR Space/Place Online Residency DAR, Online
2016 - The Remote Lab, Fermynwoods Contemporary Art
2015 - The Manchester College, Contemporary Art Practice, Artist in Residence
2011 - Interchange Flow, Fermynwoods Contremporary Art, 2 week residency on a narrowboat from Leighton Buzzard to Oundle
2011 - Print Residency, Hole Editions, Newcastle Upon Tyne
2009 - Urban Origami, Various Venues, www.urbanorigami.blogspot.com, Various Locations
2008 - Severed, The Deracinater and The Isle, Animate and RSA Arts and Ecology Commission, www.animateprojects.org/films/by_project/stop_watch
2008 - Tatton Park Biennial 08, Tatton Park, Tatton Park, Knutsford, Cheshire
2007 - Per Cent for Art Commission/Residency in County Wexford, Ireland, Per Cent for Art, Enniscorthy, Enniscorthy Projects
2007 - Shreds of Evidence (Museum of Garden History Publication written by Danielle Arnaud and Lisa Le Feurve)
2006 - Our Place (Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art and Creative Partnerships Publication)
2006 - BALTIC/Creative Partnerships 'Artist in Residence', BALTIC Center for Contemporary Art, Newcastle Upon Tyne Public commissions
Curated Projects
2019 - This Land is Our Land, PAPER, Manchester
2019 - INTER-SECTION, Market Gallery, Huddersfield
2019 - (Un)Staged, Leicester Print Workshop and PAPER, Manchester
2017 - for space PAPER, Manchester
2017 - Like the lines of a hand PAPER, Manchester
2016 - Sound and Vision PAPER, Manchester
2014 - Unstable Ground PAPER, Manchester
Conference Presentations
2022 - Drawing Conversations: Engaging with sites of history and narrative, University of Huddersfield (Main Convenor)
2017 - Drawing Conversations 2: Body, Space, Place Coventry University
2017 - Creative Practice Completion Symposium Hospitalfield Arts Centre, Arbroath
2016 - Deep Mapping UCL, London
2014 - Thinking John Berger Cardiff University
2014 - Mapping Culture Coimbra University, Portugal
Public Collections
Potteries Museum and Art Gallery, Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire
MMU Special Collections, Manchester
NN Contemporary Art, Northampton
Museum of Modern Art, New York
Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridgeshire
Texas State University, USA
Professional Footballers Association Collection The Mag Collection, UK
Fermynwoods Contemporary Art, Northamptonshire Poppy Sebire, London