NADA Miami 2022

Simeon Barclay draws on diverse cultural sources, creating works that activate complex cultural histories and explore both imposed and self-curated identities. He combines appropriated imagery with text and sculpture, to address aspects of British culture, politics and economics, as well as aesthetics, memory and subjectivity. In particular, he draws on his time in the North of England’s manufacturing industry, contrasting its realities to the aspirational glamour and theatricality of imagery in sources like Vogue.

In ‘Winner takes all’, Barclay combines a glossy pop atmosphere (blue acrylic, vinyl finish) with an underlying, industrial aluminium base – a reflection of both his critical preoccupation with popular culture aesthetics, and his personal background as an industrial engineer. Drawing on a visual archaeology, a system of cultural icons and abstract signs in a loosely diagrammatic form, the work considers the problems and possibilities of representation – to interrogate how we, often tumultuously, situate ourselves within culture and tradition.