Collection Study: Michael Simpson

Bench Paintings

at DRAF Camden

Collection Studies are a series of focused case studies of works from the David and Indrė Roberts Collection.

As part of the Collection Studies (formerly, Study Series) DRAF presents a new exhibition studying the work of British artist Michael Simpson. At the centre of the exhibition are four of Simpson’s Bench Painting series (1989–2009) of large-scale oil on canvas paintings in homage to the sixteenth century Italian philosopher Giordano Bruno, inspired by his writings and violent death.

A selection of works from a new related series titled Leper Squint (2012–ongoing), is also presented. Alongside these paintings, a range of drawings and sketches are exhibited for the first time, with rare publications and videos from the artist’s archive.

This Collection Study has been developed closely with the artist and is an unprecedented moment of concentration on Simpson’s methodology of work. His lifelong relationship to painting as a rigorously rational and analytical practice of repetition and iteration is investigated through his influential relationship with Samuel Beckett’s writings and plays, with whom he corresponded. Through the constant returning to and re-proposing of the same motif, Simpson proposes a visual investigation into cosmological philosophies and “the infamy of religious history”.

Read texts by Barry Schwabsky, William Pym and Dexter Dalwood in the Collection Studies series commissioned for the project.