England's Lost Camelot

Workplace is pleased to present England's Lost Camelot, an exhibition of new multi-media and installation works by British artist Simeon Barclay.

England's Lost Camelot is Barclay’s first solo show with Workplace and will open this September at the gallery's West End location. The exhibition takes as its starting point the legacy of the gallant knight, examining the persistence of its associated iconography in British folklore and its lasting influence in the construction of still prevalent ideas of masculinity. Combining research of this medieval legend with reference to popular culture and his personal biography, Barclay continues to explore the contestation, and strategic negotiation of cultural narratives that influence our behaviour and conformity to archetypes.

The installation elements, which surround the works in the exhibition, feature artefacts and images borrowed from both British folklore and black political resistance, and function as a way of understanding the often complex and ambivalent nature of belonging and subjectivity. These elements are interspersed with a series of collages constructed from the artist’s own personal archive of ephemera. Essential to the artist’s practice, this process of collecting, manipulating and reconfiguring these sources allows him to unpack their relation to his personal history as well as understanding their wider impact on the present. The artist states that “Being a working class, black northern male with roots in Carriacou….yes of course these markers have cultural resonance… I guess what my own archive has allowed me, in a way, is to complicate and curate these points of identification.”