Robin Deacon (born 1973

Eastbourne Eastbourne () is a town and seaside resort in East Sussex, on the south coast of England, east of Brighton and south of London. Eastbourne is immediately east of Beachy Head, the highest chalk sea cliff in Great Britain and part of the la ...

, England) is an artist, writer and filmmaker. His

interdisciplinary Interdisciplinarity or interdisciplinary studies involves the combination of multiple academic disciplines into one activity (e.g., a research project). It draws knowledge from several other fields like sociology, anthropology, psychology, ec ...

practice has spanned a variety of disciplines and themes, including explorations of performer presence and absence, the role of the artist as biographer, the possibility for journalistic approaches to arts practice, and the mapping and ethics of performance

re-enactment Reenactment or re-enactment may refer to: Legislation * Consolidation bill, a bill that consolidates several Acts of Parliament into a single Act in the United Kingdom * Repeal with reenactment, where a law is replaced with one more suitable Oth ...

. He graduated from

Cardiff School of Art Cardiff School of Art & Design (CSAD) is one of the five schools that comprise Cardiff Metropolitan University. It originated as the Cardiff School of Art in 1865. History Cardiff School of Art & Design opened in 1865 as the Cardiff School of S ...

in 1996, and went on to present his performances and videos at conferences and festivals in the UK and internationally in Europe, USA and Asia. His work has been commissioned and programmed by venues such as The ICA, London (1996),

The Young Vic The Young Vic Theatre is a performing arts venue located on The Cut (London), The Cut, near the South Bank, in the London Borough of Lambeth. The Young Vic was established by Frank Dunlop (director), Frank Dunlop in 1970. Kwame Kwei-Armah has b ...

, London (2000), CCCB, Barcelona (2006), Tanzquartier Wien, Vienna (2007) and the Centre d'art Scenique Contemporain Lausanne, Switzerland (2009),

Tate Britain Tate Britain, known from 1897 to 1932 as the National Gallery of British Art and from 1932 to 2000 as the Tate Gallery, is an art museum on Millbank in the City of Westminster in London, England. It is part of the Tate network of galleries in ...

, London (2014) and the

Barbican Centre The Barbican Centre is a performing arts centre in the Barbican Estate of the City of London and the largest of its kind in Europe. The centre hosts classical and contemporary music concerts, theatre performances, film screenings and art exhi ...

, London (2015). He has also been artist in residence at

MacDowell (artists' residency and workshop) MacDowell is an artist's residency program in Peterborough, New Hampshire, United States, founded in 1907 by composer Edward MacDowell and his wife, pianist and philanthropist Marian MacDowell. Prior to July 2020, it was known as the MacDowell ...

, New Hampshire, USA (2017) Sophiensaele, Berlin (2005),

Camden Arts Centre Camden Art Centre (formerly known as Hampstead Arts Centre until 1967 and Camden Arts Centre until 2020) is a contemporary art gallery in the London Borough of Camden, England that hosts temporary exhibitions and educational outreach projects. T ...

London (2006) and Robert Wilson's Watermill Center, New York, USA (2009). He has received a variety of awards and fellowships from organizations such as the

Foundation for Contemporary Arts The Foundation for Contemporary Arts (FCA), is a nonprofit based foundation in New York City that offers financial support and recognition to contemporary performing and visual artists through awards for artistic innovation and potential. It was ...

, Delfina Foundation,

British Arts Council The Arts Council of Great Britain was a non-departmental public body dedicated to the promotion of the fine arts in Great Britain. It was divided in 1994 to form the Arts Council of England (now Arts Council England), the Scottish Arts Council (l ...

Live Art Development Agency Live Art Development Agency, also commonly known by its acronym LADA, is a publicly funded arts organisation and registered charity founded in London in 1999 by Lois Keidan and Catherine Ugwu. LADA provides professional advice for artists as well ...

and

Franklin Furnace Franklin Furnace, also known as the Franklin Mine, is a famous mineral location for rare zinc, iron, manganese minerals in old mines in Franklin, New Jersey, United States. This locale produced more species of minerals (over 300) and more differ ...

Inc. Between 2003 and 2012, he was an Associate Artist of contemporary artists producing organization

Artsadmin Artsadmin is a UK-based organisation founded in 1979 by Judith Knight, MBE and Seonaid Stewart, providing project management, producing, support and resources for artists working in the fields of performance, dance, live art and mixed media work. ...

. From 2004, he was Course Director of the Drama and Performance Studies program at

London South Bank University London South Bank University (LSBU) is a public university in Elephant and Castle, London. It is based in the London Borough of Southwark, near the South Bank of the River Thames, from which it takes its name. Founded in 1892 as the Borough Po ...

before relocating to the USA in 2011. After ten years spent a
Professor and Chair of Performance
at the

School of the Art Institute of Chicago The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) is a private art school associated with the Art Institute of Chicago (AIC) in Chicago, Illinois. Tracing its history to an art students' cooperative founded in 1866, which grew into the museum and ...

, Robin returned to the UK in 2021 to take up the role of Artistic Director and CEO of the

Spill Festival SPILL Festival of Performance is an artist-led biennale of experimental theatre and live art in the UK which began in 2007 and takes place in a variety of venues in London and Ipswich, England. The festival is produced by Pacitti Company and the Art ...

of Performance.

Lectures and Performances

Deacon’s early 1990s output focused on the visual and the physical, with a series of performances exploring object manipulation and

personification Personification occurs when a thing or abstraction is represented as a person, in literature or art, as a type of anthropomorphic metaphor. The type of personification discussed here excludes passing literary effects such as "Shadows hold their b ...

. Later work began questioning the spatial limitations and social conventions imposed on performance with a series of interventions in public and televisual spaces, including an impromptu interrogation of former UK Home Secretary

Michael Howard Michael Howard, Baron Howard of Lympne (born Michael Hecht; 7 July 1941) is a British politician who served as Leader of the Conservative Party and Leader of the Opposition from November 2003 to December 2005. He previously held cabinet posi ...

on the Channel 5 show,

The Wright Stuff ''The Wright Stuff'' is a British television chat show which was hosted by former tabloid journalist Matthew Wright from 2000 until 2018. It aired on Channel 5 on weekday mornings from 9:15 to 11:15am. The series characterised itself as "Br ...

. The late 1990s saw a series of performances that explored issues of racial politics, and notions and definitions of obscenity produced in collaboration with performance artist and film actor Laurence R. Harvey. From the early 2000s, he began producing a series of works that used spoken word and lecture based presentation, such as ''Harry and Me'' (2004). This performance lecture described Deacon’s search for television footage of himself as a member of his school choir on an edition of

Harry Secombe Sir Harold Donald Secombe (8 September 1921 – 11 April 2001) was a Welsh comedian, actor, singer and television presenter. Secombe was a member of the British radio comedy programme ''The Goon Show'' (1951–1960), playing many characters, m ...

’s religious program

Highway A highway is any public or private road or other public way on land. It is used for major roads, but also includes other public roads and public tracks. In some areas of the United States, it is used as an equivalent term to controlled-access ...

. The performance interrogates media representations of

multiculturalism The term multiculturalism has a range of meanings within the contexts of sociology, political philosophy, and colloquial use. In sociology and in everyday usage, it is a synonym for "Pluralism (political theory), ethnic pluralism", with the tw ...

pursuing the narrative that he was planted in the choir to provide a more racially integrated image
Deacon also become known for his works in political biography, with a series of performances on the lives of former US Secretary of State

Colin Powell Colin Luther Powell ( ; April 5, 1937 – October 18, 2021) was an American politician, statesman, diplomat, and United States Army officer who served as the 65th United States Secretary of State from 2001 to 2005. He was the first African ...

(2004–08) and German Chancellor

Angela Merkel Angela Dorothea Merkel (; ; born 17 July 1954) is a German former politician and scientist who served as Chancellor of Germany from 2005 to 2021. A member of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), she previously served as Leader of the Oppo ...

(2005). Both these performances were characterized by a humorous and often

satirical Satire is a genre of the visual, literary, and performing arts, usually in the form of fiction and less frequently non-fiction, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, often with the intent of shaming or e ...

approach to the subject matter. These works also had a strong

multimedia Multimedia is a form of communication that uses a combination of different content forms such as text, audio, images, animations, or video into a single interactive presentation, in contrast to tradition ...

element and were often rewritten in response to prevailing news events regarding their subjects. Deacon's later performance piece ''Prototypes'' (2006–09) stylistically referenced the output of documentary films produced by the

British Transport Commission The British Transport Commission (BTC) was created by Clement Attlee's post-war Labour government as a part of its nationalisation programme, to oversee railways, canals and road freight transport in Great Britain (Northern Ireland had the se ...

. Between 2011 and 2013, two new lecture based performances (''The Argument Against the Body'' and ''White Balance: A History of Video'') were presented in their early form. Following a development award from

Inc. and a three day in progress presentation of the work at the Emily Harvey Gallery, NYC, a final version of ''White Balance'' was presented as part of th
Conversations at the Edge
series at the Gene Siskel Theater in Chicago (2015), and at the

at the

, London (2015).

Film and Video

Although the use of video and film has often been incorporated as an element of Deacon’s live work, several of his projects explored these mediums in their own right. His early video pieces were short, single channel video works such as ''What is a Performance Artist?'' (2005), a compilation of uses of the word ‘

performance art Performance art is an artwork or art exhibition created through actions executed by the artist or other participants. It may be witnessed live or through documentation, spontaneously developed or written, and is traditionally presented to a pu ...

’ or ‘performance artist’ in popular cultural contexts such as cinema and television. In 2005, he received a

commission for the film ''They Used to Call it a White Elephant'' which was screened as part of the
Variety
' season at the

De La Warr Pavilion The De La Warr Pavilion is a grade I listed building, located on the seafront at Bexhill on Sea, East Sussex, on the south coast of England. The Modernist and International Style building was designed by the architects Erich Mendelsohn and Ser ...

, Bexhill, UK. In 2009, he began initial work on what would become his first feature-length documentary film on the life of the late US American performance artist and filmmaker

Stuart Sherman Stuart Pratt Sherman (1881–1926) was an American literary critic, educator and journalist known for his philosophical "feud" with H. L. Mencken. The two men were very close in age, and their career paths have sometimes been compared, but Mencken ...

. The completed film,
Spectacle: A Portrait of Stuart Sherman
' saw its first screening in 2013 in a curatorial collaboration between Performa and the
Rituals of Rented Island
Exhibition at the

Whitney Museum The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is an art museum in the Meatpacking District, Manhattan, Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude ...

, New York. There were subsequent screenings at the

BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board ex ...

Art Screen Festival at the

Glasgow Film Theatre The Glasgow Film Theatre (GFT) is an independent cinema in the city centre of Glasgow. GFT is a registered charity. It occupies a purpose-built cinema building, first opened in 1939, and now protected as a category B listed building. History a ...

(2014),

in London (2014), and the

Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago The Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) Chicago is a contemporary art museum near Water Tower Place in downtown Chicago in Cook County, Illinois, United States. The museum, which was established in 1967, is one of the world's largest contemporary ...

(2015). Parallel to this film Robin Deacon performed and directed a series of live solo and group re-enactments of Sherman's performances, including Sherman's ensemble version of

Hamlet ''The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark'', often shortened to ''Hamlet'' (), is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1601. It is Shakespeare's longest play, with 29,551 words. Set in Denmark, the play depicts ...

(A portrait), which was shown as part of the ''Sacred: US Radical'' season at London's

Chelsea Theatre Chelsea Theatre is a studio theatre located on the Kings Road in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. ...

in 2009.

Writing and education

Robin Deacon has published several chapters based on his research and practice, including contributions to monographs on British Artist Joshua Sofaer (published by Intellect Live), Norwegian Performance group

Baktruppen Baktruppen was an artist collective (1986–2011), founded in Bergen, Norway. The group has had a substantial impact on European live art. The performative work of Baktruppen consisted of theatre and dance performances, performance art, invisib ...

(published by Kontur) and on artist filmmaker Stuart Sherman (published by

NYU Press New York University Press (or NYU Press) is a university press that is part of New York University. History NYU Press was founded in 1916 by the then chancellor of NYU, Elmer Ellsworth Brown. Directors * Arthur Huntington Nason, 1916–1932 ...

). He has been invited to present at th
Performance Studies International Conference
at the

University of Mainz The Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (german: Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz) is a public research university in Mainz, Rhineland Palatinate, Germany, named after the printer Johannes Gutenberg since 1946. With approximately 32,000 stu ...

, Germany (2001),

University of Zagreb The University of Zagreb ( hr, Sveučilište u Zagrebu, ; la, Universitas Studiorum Zagrabiensis) is the largest Croatian university and the oldest continuously operating university in the area covering Central Europe south of Vienna and all of ...

, Croatia (2009) and

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

, USA (2013). As well as his full time teaching positions at

and the

, Robin Deacon has been a visiting artist and speaker at varied education institutions such as the

Ruskin School of Art The Ruskin School of Art, known as the Ruskin, is an art school at the University of Oxford, England. It is part of Oxford's Humanities Division, University of Oxford, Humanities Division. History The Ruskin grew out the Oxford School of Art, ...

(Oxford, UK), St. Cloud State University (Minnesota, USA),

Grand Valley State University Grand Valley State University (GVSU, GV, or Grand Valley) is a public university in Allendale, Michigan. It was established in 1960 as Grand Valley State College. Its main campus is situated on approximately west of Grand Rapids. The universit ...

(Michigan, USA),

Roosevelt University Roosevelt University is a private university with campuses in Chicago and Schaumburg, Illinois. Founded in 1945, the university was named in honor of United States President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. The unive ...

(Chicago, USA), Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design (Michigan, USA),

Royal Holloway University Royal Holloway, University of London (RHUL), formally incorporated as Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, is a public university, public research university and a constituent college of the federal University of London. It has six schools, ...

(London, UK),

Central St Martins Central Saint Martins is a public tertiary art school in London, England. It is a constituent college of the University of the Arts London. It offers full-time courses at foundation, undergraduate and postgraduate levels, and a variety of shor ...

(London, UK),

Brunel University Brunel University London is a public research university located in the Uxbridge area of London, England. It was founded in 1966 and named after the Victorian engineer and pioneer of the Industrial Revolution, Isambard Kingdom Brunel. In June 1 ...

(London, UK),

University of Roehampton The University of Roehampton, London, formerly Roehampton Institute of Higher Education, is a public university in the United Kingdom, situated on three major sites in Roehampton, in the London Borough of Wandsworth. Roehampton was formerly an e ...

(London, UK),

Nottingham Trent University Nottingham Trent University (NTU) is a public research university in Nottingham, England. It was founded as a new university in 1992, although its roots go back to 1843 with the establishment of the Nottingham Government School of Design, w ...

(UK), and Turku Art Academy (Finland).

Live works

* Screen Memories (2021) * Vinyl Equations (2018 - 2019) * White Balance: A History of Video (2013 - 2015) * The Argument Against the Body (2011) * Approximating the Art of Stuart Sherman (2009) * Prototypes (2006 - 2009) * Dispatches (2005) * Whatever Happened to Colin Powell? (2004 - 2008) * Harry and Me (2004 - 2005) * Double O (2001) * The Costello Show (with Laurence R. Harvey) (2000) * Confessions of an Idiot (2000) * Hard Water and Other Objects (1999) * Employee of the Month (1998) * Monopoly (1997) * Attack of the Killer Cheese (1995)

Filmography

* Europe, Endless (12 mins, 2019) * Spectacle: A Portrait of Stuart Sherman (92 mins, 2014) * Words in my Mouth (4 min, 2007) * They Used to Call it a White Elephant (35 min, 2006) * What is a Performance Artist? (3 min, 2005) * Passionate About (5 min, 2000)

References

Exeunt Magazine Review of White Balance: A History of Video (2015)

An Interview with artist and writer Anthony Romero (2012)

Review of Stuart Sherman's Hamlet: A Reenactment by Robin Deacon (2009)

Writer Matt Trueman on'' Prototypes'' (2009)

Artists Newsletter Review – ''Approximating the Art of Stuart Sherman'' (2008)

The Guardian's theatre critic Lyn Gardner on ''Harry and Me'' (2004)

External links

The artists website and archive
* https://www.spillfestival.com/news/robin-deacon * http://www.artsadmin.co.uk/artists/robin-deacon

Lectures and Performances

Film and Video

Writing and education

Live works

Filmography

References

External links

Further reading