Beneath the Pilgrim Moon
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Photographer
Simon Roberts
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Prize
Honorable Mention
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Jury Top 5 Selection
Claudio Composti
This work, with a beautiful aesthetic way, is the perfect and elegant metaphor for our wider experience of the pandemic, where we kept distances from pur lovers and parents, behind a plastic shield done by masks and gloves, in which we understood the importance of relations.
Jan Corey Helford
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Company/Studios
Simon Roberts
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Date of Photograph
2020
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Socials
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Website
These photographs of veiled sculptures were taken during the second Covid-19 lockdown whilst London’s Victoria and Albert Museum was closed to the public. They were covered for their protection during refurbishment and I conceive of them as a metaphor for our wider experience of the pandemic. Elegant and melancholic, the sculptures seem absorbed in timeless contemplation, trapped in their own mineral universe. The photographs speak of the extraordinary events of the Covid years, of nations shrouded by PPE, covered up behind our masks, suspended in time, restricted of movement and freedoms.
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Biography
Simon Roberts (b.1974) is a visual artist based in Brighton, UK, whose work interrogates notions of identity and belonging, and the complex relationship between history, place and culture. He has exhibited widely and His photographs reside in major public and private collections, including the George Eastman House, Art Collection Deutsche Börse, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Author of several critically acclaimed monographs including Motherland, We English, Pierdom and Merrie Albion, his work has also been profiled and published widely.
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Awards
In 2010 he was selected as the official British Election Artist by the House of Commons Works of Art Committee to produce a record of the general election on behalf of the UK Parliamentary Art Collection, and, in 2014, represented Britain during the UK-Russia Year of Culture. He has been commissioned to make several large-scale public artworks and recognised with numerous awards including an Honorary Fellowship to the Royal Photographic Society, the Vic Odden Award and grants from Arts Council England and the John Kobal Foundation.
