RIA Commission: Practising Performance
with Simeon Barclay
Practising Performance is a commissioning programme to support artists who would like to engage with live performance.
We invite a visual artist who is interested in exploring performance to take part in a multidisciplinary research and development programme to create a new performance work.
The RIA team works closely with each invited artist to provide them with a support system, offering resources, contacts and opportunities to experiment with live work.
Each Practising Performance commission presents the opportunity for an artist who has not worked with performance to do so without having to think about a fixed format or venue.
Together, we will find ways to present publicly the new work that has lasting impact and builds meaningful engagement with performance practice today. Practising Performance is part of RIA’s programming strategy to consider more sustainable and longer-term ways to support artists.
Practising Performance enters its second iteration with artist Simeon Barclay. Barclay’s practice often takes the form of sculptures or installations rooted in a strong relationship with material histories. He uses pop cultural references to discuss personal and cultural memory and navigate imposed and self-created identities. Barclay has an intense interest in the body and the self, investigating how self-image is created and grappled with. Fashion, dance, the theatrical, posing and adornments are intricately woven throughout his work and will inform the research and development of a new performance work.
Simeon Barclay (b. Huddersfield, 1975) lives and works in West Yorkshire. Barclay received his BA from Leeds Metropolitan University, Leeds in 2010 and an MFA from Goldsmiths College, London in 2014. In 2020 Barclay was selected to be included in the British Art Show 9. He has exhibited both nationally and internationally including at Southbank Centre, Tate Britain, South London Gallery, Workplace, Gathering, London; Liverpool Biennial, Liverpool; Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Workplace Foundation, Gateshead; Holden Gallery, Manchester; The Tetley, Leeds; Cubitt Gallery, London; The Bluecoat, Liverpool; Jerwood Space, London; Galerie Kandlhofer, Vienna; Rodolphe Janssen, Brussels; Arcadia Missa, New York and W139, Amsterdam.
His work is in the Arts Council Collection, London; Zabludowicz Collection, London; Manchester Art Gallery and Whitworth Art Gallery collection, Manchester. Barclay is currently included in this year’s Sculpture In The City, working on a major new commission for Deutsche Bank and will be taking part in this year’s Chester Contemporary.