Simeon Barclay

Simeon Barclay's practice involves creating environments where objects, architecture, sounds, video and images collide to create a deeply personal and often humorous portrait of British culture.

For The Ruin, Barclay has made material the energy of the live performance through a spatial intervention, resonating with his own voice. It invites the audience on a journey back in time to when the M62 motorway was being carved through the Pennines; one of the most significant infrastructural projects of postwar Britain. The work speaks of the ambition of the planners and the freedom that the project offered, particularly to the residents of Huddersfield and its surroundings, where the artist spent his youth. The temporary structure of scaffolding suggests that our shared history is also a work in progress, suspended between construction and completion. The performance also takes the audience into more intimate settings, such as the artist's childhood living room where his father's presence dominates.

Barclay's artistic practice consistently brings into proximity the emotional and the infrastructural, the familial and the political, the labour and the leisure. With this installation, he invites the visitor to hear, feel, see and join the journey of The Ruin. Simeon Barclay is nominated for his performance The Ruin, commissioned by the Roberts Institute of Art and presented at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), London, The Hepworth Wakefield, West Yorkshire, and New Art Exchange, Nottingham.