Simon Ling

Simon Ling (born 1968) is engaged in depicting the world around him through painting objects and constructions principally found, sometimes made. Ling’s subjects, which include rotting piles of wood, undergrowth, circuit boards, and nondescript blocks of flats are inhabitants of the realm Ling calls the ‘un-named’, the dark matter of cultural reality. At first sight straightforward, his paintings of overlooked corners of the everyday generate works that bring this dark matter to light and include as their subject the creative act and temporality of the conscious mind.

Ling’s practice is characterised by a sustained and intense engagement with looking and the painting process. His works are animated by the cognitive drama that results from engaging a thing through the practice of creative observation to produce an object alive to perception.

Over the past three decades, Ling has lived and worked in London, describing its nooks and crannies with a reverence and dedication suited to history painting, which he describes as a ‘perceptual archaeology’.

Ling has recently exhibited at the Towner Art Gallery in Eastbourne, his first solo presentation in a UK public institution. Other recent solo exhibitions include Greengrassi, London and Bergen Kunsthall, Bergen. Selected group shows include Tate Britain, London; Camden Arts Centre, London; CAPC, Bordeaux and Islington Museum, London.