Simon Faithfull

Simon Faithfull is a Reader in Fine Art at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London, where he works across the school with BA/BFA and PhD students. His artistic practice spans video, performance, drawing, and text, exploring our relationship with the planet through subjective experiences and mappings that he terms 'An Expanding Atlas of Subjectivity.'

Faithfull was born in Oxfordshire, UK, and studied at Central St Martins and then Reading University. His educational background has informed his interdisciplinary approach to art, combining technical skills with conceptual depth to create works that test planetary limits and report back from extremities.

Simon Faithfull's research centers on environmental themes, particularly humanity's relationship with water, climate change, and planetary scale. His key interests include contemporary art, environmental art, video art, performance art, drawing, geographic art, conceptual art, climate change art, and space art. Faithfull often places his own body in precarious and absurd situations to measure human scale against planetary scale. His works frequently address journeys, mapping, and the relationship between humans and the natural world, using humor and the absurd to mitigate potential existential angst while delivering profound environmental commentary.

His recent artistic output demonstrates a consistent focus on aquatic environments and climate change, blending fact and fiction to create 'dreams-like images' built on real physical actions. Many pieces position the artist's body in precarious situations to highlight humanity's fragile position on the planet. His approach combines conceptual depth with physical engagement, often resulting in works that are both humorous and profound in their commentary on the human condition and environmental crisis.

Throughout his career, Faithfull has participated in numerous significant exhibitions worldwide, including solo shows at Galerie Polaris (Paris), Sprinhornhof Kunstverein (Germany), and Le Musée des Beaux-Arts Calais (France), as well as group shows at Palais de Tokyo (Paris), Venice Biennale, and Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin).

As an educator at the Slade School of Fine Art, Faithfull supervises BA/BFA and PhD students. His major projects include 'The Erratics' (a seven-year public art project for Cambridge University), 'An Arbitrary Taxonomy of Birds' (installed at the Natural History Museum in Berlin), and 'Fathom' (exhibited at The Exchange in Penzance). He frequently collaborates with scientists, technicians, and transmission experts to realize ambitious projects that often involve journeys to remote locations like Antarctica, the Adriatic Sea, and space's edge.

Faithfull's practice demonstrates a commitment to exploring the planet as a 'sculptural object,' testing its limits and reporting back from its extremities through works that bridge art, science, and environmental activism.