Simon Bedwell

Life After Liberalism

2004

Some of the posters have had their transient commercial directives so intertwined with the artist's fictional and material alterations that it is impossible to tell where the original ends and the mutation begins.

Simon Bedwell

Untitled (Brains)

2003
spray paint on found poster
79.2 x 59.5 cm

Whilst destroying the quick-hit, constantly shifting message of this ephemeral material, Simon Bedwell also saves it, giving it new weight and an object-quality that meanwhile retains an echo of the familiar.

Simon Bedwell

Untitled (Croatia)

2004
Spray paint on poster

Using ClipArt and WordArt software, available to almost anybody with a computer, Simon Bedwell's posters combine found pictures with words and phrases, real and invented.

Simon Bedwell

Untitled (Forgetkult)

2003
spray paint on found poster
43 x 62.3 cm

Simon Bedwell

Untitled (Come to London)

2004
spray paint on found poster on aluminium
64.3 x 49.3 cm

Simon Bedwell

Untitled (Eliteratti)

2004
spray paint, acrylic and collage on paper
121.5 x 152 cm

Simon Bedwell

Untitled (Exhibition)

2004
spray paint on found poster
43.7 x 55.5 cm

Simon Bedwell

Untitled (Festival)

2004
spray paint on found poster
96 x 135 cm

Simon Bedwell

Untitled (Freud Museum)

2004
spray paint on found poster
127 x 99.7 cm

Simon Bedwell

Untitled (Marli Renfro Centre)

2003
spray paint on found poster
139.5 x 100 cm

Simon Bedwell

Untitled (Struggl)

2003
spray paint and acrylic on paper
121.5 x 152.3 cm

Simon Bedwell

Untitled (Tate Jamaica)

2003
spray paint on found poster
89 x 63 cm

Simon Bedwell

Untitled (The Rich..)

2004
spray paint on found poster on aluminium
52 x 74.5 cm

Simon Bedwell

Untitled (Shark)

2004
spray paint on found poster
75 x 55.5 cm

As in much of Simon Bedwell’s work, a wide range of visual material, from promotional blurbs to local newspaper headlines, from '50s photography to Communist Bloc advertising, combines to shape the final images.

Simon Bedwell is best known for his hand-manipulated trashed posters and photographs, using text and spray-paint to generate esoteric, strangely poignant or crass comedic fusions of word and image.

Simon Bedwell draws on the visual vernacular of the streets, employing the cheap and throwaway nostalgia of posters scavenged from billboards, bargain bins and thrift stores as raw materials to fragment, divert and elaborate the original meaning into absurd compositions, poetic narratives and sardonic allegories of power.