Areas of interest
Simon Willems is an artist, writer and interdisciplinary researcher working primarily with painting and curating. His practice lies at the intersection of art, politics, and ethics.
Simon has research interests in:
- Art and Politics
- Art and Ethics
- Art and Organisations
- Art and Wellness Culture
- Painting
- Curating
- Virtue Ethics
- Critical Management Studies
- Critical Realism
- Critical Theory
- Post-structuralism
Simon recently completed British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow based between the Art department and Henley Business School. His fellowship project, Rethinking Wellbeing: Evaluating the Neoliberalisation of Wellbeing in the Workplace Using Artworks as a Critical Lens, examines how contemporary artists critique wellbeing programmes within organisations by challenging how different aspects of neoliberalism underpin them.
Building on the hermit/corporate team-building participant duality that fuelled his doctoral research, and which grounds his artistic practice, his research investigates how organisational austerity measures and a social construct of wellbeing, created by Human Resources Management, conflicts with employee wellbeing in servicing organisational interests. Central to this analysis is a virtue ethics approach to organisations, in tandem with Critical Management Studies, which examines how individualised wellbeing practices negate employees’ needs and obscure structural inequalities, undermining the common good.
I am a practising artist and exhibit nationally and internationally. I have written and published articles in the Journal of Contemporary of Painting, the Journal of Organizational Aesthetics and the painting journal Turps Banana. I am currently writing my first monograph, Rethinking Wellbeing Through Art: How Artists Critique Wellness in the Workplace (Palgrave Macmillan). Although my work as an artist is primarily concerned with painting, this has developed alongside curatorial projects in all media that have increasingly focussed on organisational aesthetics and the role of neoliberalism in shaping wellbeing initiatives in working environments.
Background
Simon Willems is a London-based artist, researcher, and writer. He has an MA in Painting from the Royal College of Art and a PhD in Fine Art from the University of Reading where he recently completed a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship. Willems has shown in solo and group exhibitions throughout Europe, North America, and Asia.
These include solo exhibitions at:
- Torrance Art Museum (Los Angeles)
- FRAC Auvergne (Clermont-Ferrand)
- Elephant West (London)
- Galerie Polaris (Paris)
- Xero, Kline & Coma (London)
- Wallspace (New York).
His work has featured and been reviewed in Flash Art, Art Review, Elephant Magazine, ART US, Le Monde, WOUND, El Pais, La Libre Belgique and Beautiful Decay and was included in the survey painting publication A Brush with the Real: Figurative Painting Today (Laurence King Publishing) 2014. Willems' written work has been published in the Journal of Organizational Aesthetics, the Journal of Contemporary Painting, and the painting journal Turps Banana.
He is currently writing his first monograph, Rethinking Wellbeing Through Art: How Artists Critique Wellness Narratives in the Workplace (Palgrave Macmillan). Although his work as an artist is primarily concerned with painting, this has developed alongside curatorial projects in all media that have increasingly focussed on organisational aesthetics and the role of neoliberalism in shaping wellbeing narratives in workplace contexts.
Academic qualifications
I studied Fine Art at Nottingham Trent University (1991-1994) and Painting at the Royal College of Art (1998-2000), before completing my practice-based PhD in Fine Art at the University of Reading in 2019. My doctoral research explored the characterisation of anonymity in contemporary figurative painting.
Selected Solo Exhibitions including:
2019 Step Away From the Sun - You Are Blocking the Light, Jugg Art Foundation, Ipswich, UK
2019 How Not to Disappear Completely, Elephant West, London
2018 Killing Me Softly, Galerie Polaris, Paris, France
2015 Universal Solutions Incorporated, Xero, Kline & Coma, London
2011 A Certain Way to Fade, Torrance Art Museum, Los Angeles
2005 Strangeways Here We Come, Wallspace, New York
2004 Bad things even happen to nice people, FRAC Auvergne, Clermont Ferrand, France
2002 Folk Law, Percymiller Gallery, London
Selected Group Exhibitions including:
2024 The Bruise, Long Story Short, New York, USA (curated by Richard Wathen)
2022 Art of Management & Organisation conference exhibition, University of Liverpool and Bluecoat in collaboration with the Royal Standard, Liverpool
2022 Green, House of Ebata, Tokyo, Japan
2021 The Collection - National Museum of Gdansk, Poland
2021 Memento, La Collection du FRAC Auvergne, Musée Crozatier, Le Puy, France
2019 Annual Ipswich Biennial, (Uncommon or Garden, Jugg Art Foundation &
2019 Silent Street, Atlas House) Ipswich, UK
2016 Maisons pour Insomniaques, Rêve 1 FRAC Haute-Normandie, Le Garage, Saint-Saëns, France
Curatorial Projects including:
2022 Art of Management & Organisation conference exhibition, University of Liverpool and Bluecoat in collaboration with the Royal Standard, Liverpool
2014 Artists' Film & Video Gala, City Lit at the Conservatoire, Blackheath, London
2013 Sitting with the Qualities of a Mountain, Blyth Gallery, Imperial College, London
2012 Let the World Slip, Lion & Lamb Gallery, London
2011 Please Drive Slowly Through Our Village, Fold Gallery, London
Selected Conferences including:
2025 Annual Art History Conference, University of York, UK: 'Art, Work & Wellness'
2024 International Society of MacIntyrean Enquiry Conference, University of Reading, UK: 'Expressions of Preference: 'Evaluating the limits of emotivist critique in the art of Carey Young'
2023 International Society of Macintyrean Enquiry Conference, University of Navarra, Pamplona, Spain: ‘Using artworks as a window through which to re-examine Macintyre’s critique of neoliberal governance’
2022 Art of Management & Organisation conference, University of Liverpool: ‘Art as Activism’
2018 Art of Management & Organisation conference, University of Brighton: ‘Performance’
