Simon Bacon was born in 1969 in Essex and he currently lives and works in Essex. Bacon studied at the London Atelier of Representational Art 2011, and completed postgraduate studies with Masters in Sculptural Practice at Colchester School of Art (2013). Having initially been concerned with an existentialist approach to form, Bacon worked predominantly in bronze, exploring the human body’s capacity for movement and perception, as well as the process of sculpting as a meditative and expressive act in itself. As his work has developed and more recently in 2022, he started to move away from figurative work to more abstract work, and currently is now working mainly in steel, constructing sculptures that as he says “stand alone in themselves, containing elements of  our being” rather than being directly figurative. 

 

Influenced by his postgraduate studies in Osteopathy and Transpersonal Psychology, Bacon is primarily concerned with perception, the mind body connection, movement and form and how they resonate and relate. His practice explores this through surface forms, shapes and spaces, presenting us with  harmonic forms representing feelings and emotions. His work has always been concerned with becoming, constructing individuality, chance and freedom of choice. These ideas are naturally embodied through the sculptor’s process, which consists of stages of construction and deconstruction and an open unmediated starting position. Bacon uses very few drawings or sketches to create ideas; his work is deliberately spontaneous and driven by the idea of requiring an open mind, inducing flow states and bridging a connection with the body as the physical process of making emerges. He feels this approach accesses the unconscious in a way which allows for greater creative freedom. He explained that “the unconscious is at the source of his work”.

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His latest work often contrasts lines of tension with gentle flowing forms. The steel is often fixed and held in tension as if it could spring away if released. These ‘individual constructions’ as he calls them are abstract geometric forms which relate to the interconnection of the psychological (tensions /thoughts / feelings and the form of the body and its movement and place in the world. As some says “I am trying to sculpt feelings, thoughts and emotions.

He is hoping to achieve harmony, balance and stillness.

Contingent effects produced by process are contextualised within the relationship between intentionality, chance and the unconscious. Often meditating on each object for extended periods during making, Bacon is interested in how the depth of the artist’s connection, both to the object and the process of making it, might influence these contingent outcomes.

 

 

Simon Bacon was awarded the Firstsite Collectors Award in 2014. In 2013 Bang and Olufsen mounted a solo exhibition of his work, Art and Living, presented at Bang and Olufsen’s Colchester gallery. Bacon has also been included in numerous group exhibitions throughout the U.K., including: Visual Variations: Figurative to Abstract, NoonPowell Gallery, Notting Hill, London (2020); Christmas Exhibition, NoonPowell Gallery, Notting Hill, London (2020);  Out of this World, Thompson's Gallery, London (2019); London Art Fair (2019); Summer Exhibition, The Minories Gallery, Colchester (2018); London Art Fair (2018); 35th Annual Exhibition, Thompson's Gallery, Aldeburgh (2017); Art 50 Exhibition, Sculpt Gallery (2017); Are you interested in bodies?, Sentinel Gallery, Wivenhoe (2017); The Art of Casting, Sculpt Gallery (2015); A Year in Review, Lacey Contemporary Gallery (2015); Autumn Exhibition Thompson's Gallery, Aldeburgh (2015); Open Studios, Sculpt Gallery (2015); Sentinel Gallery, Wivenhoe (2015); Affordable Art Fair, Battersea, London (2014); Bacon Fenn & Moran: A Dedication to Form, Lacey Contemporary Gallery, London (2014); Shaping The Future: Simon Bacon & Lucy Lutyens, Sculpt Gallery (2014); and The Brick Lane Gallery, London (2013).