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 a 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.
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 ÌÇÐÄVlog 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
2013-2019Ìý PhD Fine Art, ÌÇÐÄVlog University
1998-2000Ìý MA Painting, Royal College of Art
1991-1994Ìý BA (hons) Fine Art, Nottingham Trent University
Awards and honours
2021Ìý British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship
2018Ìý AoMO Conference Bursary, University of Brighton
2015Ìý Research Travel Grant, ÌÇÐÄVlog University
2015Ìý Swedish Embassy Doctoral Research Travel Award
2000Ìý London Arts Council Funding Award
1999Ìý Stephenson Harwood Prize, Royal College of Art
1999Ìý T.I. Group Scholarship, Royal College of Art
1999Ìý Basil H Alkazzi Travel Award to New York, Royal College of Art
1999Ìý Worshipful Painter-Stainers Award, Royal College of Art
1996Ìý Gilchrist Fisher Landscape Award (runner-up)
1993Ìý TEMPUS Travel Award, Akademie Vytvarnych Umeni, Prague
Selected Solo Exhibitions including:
2019Ìý ÌýStep Away From the Sun - You Are Blocking the Light, Jugg Art Foundation, Ipswich, UK
2019Ìý ÌýHow Not to Disappear Completely, Elephant West, London
2018Ìý ÌýKilling Me Softly, Galerie Polaris, Paris, France
2015Ìý ÌýUniversal Solutions Incorporated,Ìý Xero, Kline & Coma, London
2011Ìý ÌýA Certain Way to Fade, Torrance Art Museum, Los Angeles
2005Ìý ÌýStrangeways Here We Come, Wallspace, New York
2004Ìý ÌýBad things even happen to nice people, FRAC Auvergne, Clermont Ferrand, France
2002Ìý ÌýFolk Law, Percymiller Gallery, London
Ìý Ìý
Selected Group Exhibitions including:
2025Ìý Performance Enhancements, Atlas House, Ipswich
2024Ìý The Bruise, Long Story Short, New York, USA (curated by Richard Wathen)
2022Ìý Art of Management & Organisation conference exhibition, University of Liverpool and Bluecoat inÌý Ìý Ìý Ìý Ìý Ìý Ìý Ìý Ìý Ìý Ìý collaboration with the Royal Standard, Liverpool
2022Ìý Green, House of Ebata, Tokyo, Japan
2021Ìý The Collection - National Museum of Gdansk, Poland
2021Ìý Memento, La Collection du FRAC Auvergne, Musée Crozatier, Le Puy, France
2019Ìý Annual Ipswich Biennial, (Uncommon or Garden, Jugg Art Foundation &2019Ìý Silent Street, AtlasÌý Ìý Ìý Ìý Ìý Ìý Ìý Ìý Ìý Ìý Ìý Ìý House) Ipswich, UK
2016Ìý Maisons pour Insomniaques, Rêve 1 FRAC Haute-Normandie, Le Garage, Saint-Saëns, France
Curatorial Projects including:
2025 HARDER, BETTER, FASTER, STRONGER, The Stephen Lawrence Gallery, University of Greenwich London
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:
2025Ìý Rethinking Wellbeing Through Art Symposium, University of Greenwich (in partnership with theÌý Ìý Ìý Ìý Ìý Ìý Ìý Ìý Ìý Ìý Ìý Ìý Ìý ÌÇÐÄVlog and the British Academy), UK: ‘How Artist Critique Wellness Narratives inÌý Ìý Ìý Ìý Ìý Ìý Ìý Ìý Ìý Ìý Ìý Ìý Ìý Ìý Ìýthe Workplace’
2025Ìý Annual Art History Conference, University of York, UK: 'Art, Work & Wellness'
2024Ìý International Society of MacIntyrean Enquiry Conference, ÌÇÐÄVlog, UK: 'Expressions ofÌý Ìý Ìý Ìý Ìý Ìý Ìý Ìý Preference: 'Evaluating the limits of emotivist critique in the art of Carey Young'
2023Ìý International Society of MacIntyrean Enquiry Conference, University of Navarra, Pamplona, Spain:Ìý Ìý Ìý Ìý Ìý Ìý Ìý Ìý Ìý Ìý'Using artworks as a window through which to re-examine Macintyre’s critique of neoliberalÌý Ìý Ìý Ìý Ìý Ìý Ìý Ìý Ìý Ìý Ìý Ìý Ìý Ìý Ìý Ìý Ìý Ìý Ìýgovernance’
2022Ìý Art of Management & Organisation conference, University of Liverpool: ‘Art as Activism’
2018Ìý Art of Management & Organisation conference, University of Brighton: ‘Performance’
