Simon Callery

British artist Simon Callery makes physical paintings. His works have an emphasis on materiality. Callery became a new addition to the artists represented in our gallery, with his first solo exhibition in Spain which we presented in 2021. 

His paintings are often made in direct contact with the hard surfaces of the urban environment or on location in the landscape. He has worked in collaboration with field archaeologists from Oxford University’s School of Archaeology for many years and is now taking painting processes developed on excavation sites in the landscape to apply them to works made in the city, initially in London and more recently in Rome. For these works, the canvasses are framed, cut, punctured, soaked in highly saturated coloured distemper and stitched together in a way that shows all kinds of internal voids and spaces. The paintings on show in his 2021 exhibition originated from working on two Iron Age excavation sites: Moel y Gaer, Bodfari in North Wales and Nesscliffe Hill in Shropshire. 

He has said that he works “to give painting back its body, and as a result obtain a better awareness of our own”. 

Born in 1960, Simon Callery lives and works between his native London and Turin. He graduated from Cardiff College of Art in 1983. His work is present in public collections such as the Arts Council Collection, London; Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo; Birmingham Museum Trust; British Museum, London; European Investment Bank, Luxembourg; Centre national des arts plastiques, Paris; Nottingham Trent University in the UK; Stanhope plc; and the Tate, London.