Robert Priseman (born in

Spondon Spondon is a ward of the city of Derby. Originally a small village, Spondon dates back to the Domesday Book and it became heavily industrialised in the 19th and early 20th centuries, with companies such as British Celanese. History The n ...

, Derbyshire in 1965) is a British artist, collector, writer, curator and publisher who lives and works in

Essex Essex () is a county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the River Thames to the south, and G ...

, England. Over 200 works of art by Priseman are held in art museum collections around the world including the V&A,

Museum der Moderne Salzburg The Museum der Moderne Salzburg has two buildings at two different locations in Salzburg, Austria. The Rupertinum in the old town for new artistic concepts opened in 1983 and the Museum on the Mönchsberg for modern art in a contemporary setting op ...

Art Gallery of New South Wales The Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW), founded as the New South Wales Academy of Art in 1872 and known as the National Art Gallery of New South Wales between 1883 and 1958, is located in The Domain, Sydney, Australia. It is the most importa ...

, Musée de Louvain la Neuve,

The Royal Collection The Royal Collection of the British royal family is the largest private art collection in the world. Spread among 13 occupied and historic royal residences in the United Kingdom, the collection is owned by King Charles III and overseen by the ...

Windsor Castle Windsor Castle is a royal residence at Windsor in the English county of Berkshire. It is strongly associated with the English and succeeding British royal family, and embodies almost a millennium of architectural history. The original c ...

, The

Allen Memorial Art Museum The Allen Memorial Art Museum (AMAM) is an art museum located in Oberlin, Ohio, and it is run by Oberlin College. Founded in 1917, the collection contains over 15,000 works of art. Overview The AMAM is primarily a teaching museum and is aimed at ...

, The

Mead Art Museum Mead Art Museum houses the fine art collection of Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts. Opened in 1949, the building is named after architect William Rutherford Mead (class of 1867), of the prestigious architectural firm McKim, Mead & White ...

Honolulu Museum of Art The Honolulu Museum of Art (formerly the Honolulu Academy of Arts) is an art museum in Honolulu, Hawaii. The museum is the largest of its kind in the state, and was founded in 1922 by Anna Rice Cooke. The museum has one of the largest single col ...

and The National Galleries of Scotland. Priseman read Aesthetics and Art Theory at the

University of Essex The University of Essex is a public research university in Essex, England. Established by royal charter in 1965, Essex is one of the original plate glass universities. Essex's shield consists of the ancient arms attributed to the Kingdom of Es ...

under art theorist Professor Michael Podro and began his working life as a book designer for

Longman Longman, also known as Pearson Longman, is a publishing company founded in London, England, in 1724 and is owned by Pearson PLC. Since 1968, Longman has been used primarily as an imprint by Pearson's Schools business. The Longman brand is also ...

publishers (1989-1992). While there he started painting portraits in oils, with sitters including the

Dalai Lama Dalai Lama (, ; ) is a title given by the Tibetan people to the foremost spiritual leader of the Gelug or "Yellow Hat" school of Tibetan Buddhism, the newest and most dominant of the four major schools of Tibetan Buddhism. The 14th and current Dal ...

Phil Collins Philip David Charles Collins (born 30 January 1951) is an English singer, musician, songwriter, record producer and actor. He was the drummer and lead singer of the rock band Genesis and also has a career as a solo performer. Between 1982 and ...

Jeremy Paxman Jeremy Dickson Paxman (born 11 May 1950) is an English broadcaster, journalist, author, and television presenter. Born in Leeds, Paxman was educated at Malvern College and St Catharine's College, Cambridge, where he edited the undergraduate new ...

and Cardinal Basil Hume. Work from this period is held in number of public collections including The Royal Collection at

, Corpus Christi College Cambridge and

Cranfield Cranfield is a village and civil parish in the west of Bedfordshire, England, situated between Bedford and Milton Keynes. It had a population of 4,909 in 2001. increasing to 5,369 at the 2011 Census. The parish is in Central Bedfordshire uni ...

University. In 2004 he gave up portrait painting and embarked on thematic series of works aimed to engage the viewer in dialogue on provocative psychological and socio-political issues. Such works include The Hospital Paintings, Subterraneans, The Francis Bacon Interiors, No Human Way to Kill, The Troubles and Nazi Gas Chambers. In 2013 Priseman, in partnership with artist, Simon Carter established

Contemporary British Painting Contemporary British Painting is an artists' collective of over 60 members, founded in 2013 by Robert Priseman with the assistance of Simon Carter. It is a platform for contemporary painting in the UK "seeking to explore and promote critical co ...

. In 2013 he donated a collection of twenty paintings by contemporary British artists, known as 'The Robert Priseman Gift', to the

Falmouth Art Gallery Falmouth Art Gallery is a publicly funded art gallery in Cornwall, with one of the leading art collections in Cornwall and southwest England, which features work by old masters, major Victorian artists, British and French Impressionists, leadin ...

, England. Robert Priseman and Simon Carter established 'East Contemporary Art: A collection of 21st Century Practice' at

University Campus Suffolk The University of Suffolk is a public university situated in Suffolk and Norfolk, England. The modern university was established in 2007 as University Campus Suffolk (UCS), the institution was founded as a unique collaboration between the Unive ...

, England. Priseman also collects paintings by British artists he admires and owns the ‘Priseman Seabrook Collection of 21st Century British Painting’ which first went on museum display at Huddersfield Art Gallery in 2014. In 2010 he was appointed Fellow at the Human Rights Centre,

in 2015 Visiting Professor in Fine Art at the Department of Art and Humanities,

, and in 2017 a Visiting Research Fellow at the

University of Leeds , mottoeng = And knowledge will be increased , established = 1831 – Leeds School of Medicine1874 – Yorkshire College of Science1884 - Yorkshire College1887 – affiliated to the federal Victoria University1904 – University of Leeds , ...

Contemporary British Painting

In 2013 Priseman founded

in partnership with artist Simon Carter - a platform for contemporary painting in the UK. Formed to explore and promote critical context and dialogue in current painting practice through solo and group exhibitions; talks, publications and an art prize, Contemporary British Painting also facilitates the donation of paintings to art collections, galleries and museums in the UK and around the world.

Priseman Seabrook Collection of 21st Century British Painting

In 2012 Robert Priseman assembled a private collection of work by contemporary British painters which formed the foundation of

The Priseman Seabrook Collection The Priseman Seabrook Collection is a British-based private collection founded by the artist Robert Priseman and his wife Ally Seabrook. It is composed of three distinct categories: 21st Century British Painting, 20th and 21st Century British Wor ...

of 21st Century British Painting. As well as emerging artists, the collection contains works by artists of national significance including:

Tracey Emin Tracey Karima Emin, CBE, RA (; born 3 July 1963) is a British artist known for her autobiographical and confessional artwork. Emin produces work in a variety of media including drawing, painting, sculpture, film, photography, neon text and ...

Matthew Krishanu Matthew Krishanu was born in Bradford, England in 1980. He graduated from The University of Exeter with a BA (Hons) in Fine Art and English Literature in 2001 and completed a master's degree in Fine Art at Central Saint Martins, University Col ...

Mary Webb Mary Gladys Webb (25 March 1881 – 8 October 1927) was an English Romance (literary fiction), romance novelist and poet of the early 20th century, whose work is set chiefly in the Shropshire countryside and among Shropshire characters and ...

, Peter Blake, Susan Gunn,

Graham Sutherland Graham Vivian Sutherland (24 August 1903 – 17 February 1980) was a prolific English artist. Notable for his paintings of abstract landscapes and for his portraits of public figures, Sutherland also worked in other media, including printmaking ...

, Nicholas Middleton,

Lucian Freud Lucian Michael Freud (; 8 December 1922 – 20 July 2011) was a British painter and draughtsman, specialising in figurative art, and is known as one of the foremost 20th-century English portraitists. He was born in Berlin, the son of Jewis ...

Francis Bacon Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Alban (; 22 January 1561 – 9 April 1626), also known as Lord Verulam, was an English philosopher and statesman who served as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England. Bacon led the advancement of both ...

, Simon Burton, Alex Hanna,

Alan Davie James Alan Davie (28 September 1920 – 5 April 2014) was a Scottish painter and musician. Biography Davie was born in Grangemouth, Scotland in 1920, the son of Elizabeth (née Turnbull) and James William Davie, an art teacher and painter who ...

Pen Dalton Penelope Dalton is an artist, critic and writer. Education Dalton trained at Goldsmiths, University of London and Brighton University and gained a PhD in Creative studies from Plymouth University in 2008. Career Dalton taught studio practic ...

, Susie Hamilton,

Julie Umerle Julie Umerle is an American-born abstract painter who lives and works in London. __TOC__ Biography Umerle was born in Connecticut USA and relocated to London with her family as a young child. She studied French Literature at the Univers ...

, Simon Carter, Judith Tucker, Marguerite Horner,

Claudia Böse Claudia Böse (born 1963 in Nueremberg) is an abstract painter and has been based in Suffolk, England, since 2002. Böse graduated from the Royal Academy of Arts in 1996 and is a member of the artists network Kunstnetz International. Her wor ...

, Stephen Newton, Alison Pilkington, James Quin, Nathan Eastwood, Paula MacArthur, Greg Rook,

Annabel Dover Annabel Dover (born 1975 in Liverpool) is a British artist. She has a BA (Hons) in fine art from Newcastle University (1998), an MA in fine art from Central Saint Martins, London (2002), and a teaching qualification (PGCE) in art and design from ...

and

David Hockney David Hockney (born 9 July 1937) is an English painter, draftsman, printmaker, stage designer, and photographer. As an important contributor to the pop art movement of the 1960s, he is considered one of the most influential British artists o ...

. The collection, owned by Priseman and his wife, was exhibited for the first time in 2014 at Huddersfield Art Gallery and now includes over 100 works of art.

Selected art work by Robert Priseman

The Francis Bacon Interiors

'The Francis Bacon Interiors' were painted between 2006–2008 and depict the Paris hotel room where

's lover and muse George Dyer committed suicide, the room in a Catholic hospital in Madrid where Bacon himself died, and a series of studios where he painted. 'The Francis Bacon Interiors' formed part of 'The Subconscious Revealed', an exhibition curated by Priseman at Huddersfield Art Gallery in 2009. Other work in the exhibition included Bacon’s ‘Figure Study Two’ and works by Freud, Auerbach, Sutherland, Kossof and Richard Hamilton.

No Human Way to Kill

In 2007 Priseman began work on the No Human Way to Kill series of paintings which present the five different methods of execution used in the USA (Hanging, Firing Squad, Gassing, Lethal Injection and Electrocution), alongside the paintings, twelve etchings look at other methods of state sanctioned execution used around the world. The series examined how different countries have adopted different techniques to execute condemned prisoners, which in turn argue execution to be a socially constructed act of group catharsis. No Human Way to Kill was exhibited at The Dazed Gallery in London in 2008 and at The White Box in New York in 2010 and 2011. The original paintings and drawings are held at the

at Amherst College, Massachusetts, USA with a set of twelve etchings at the V&A, London.

Nazi Gas Chambers: From Memory To History

Following on from 'No Human Way to Kill' Priseman produced the 'Gas Chambers' series which were first exhibited at The Minories Galleries, Colchester, UK. The project has three parts and focuses on the developmental steps taken in Nazi Germany that began with the gassing of the mentally ill and ended in

genocide Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people—usually defined as an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group—in whole or in part. Raphael Lemkin coined the term in 1944, combining the Greek word (, "race, people") with the Latin ...

. The first part comprises portraits of the participants of the Wannsee Conference of 20 January 1942, the second part comprises six pencil drawings which are designed to look like hand coloured postcards and show the outsides of the hospitals in Germany and Austria where the T4 Euthanasia programme took place between 1939 and 1941. The third part consists of five large oil paintings (each 6 ft x 9 ft) which trace the movement taken by the Nazis towards an industrialised killing process which culminated in

Auschwitz Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It con ...

. The project was also exhibited at CoCA, Christchurch, New Zealand in 2010 and Arch 402 Gallery, London in 2012. The Wannsee portraits are held by the

Tweed Museum of Art The Tweed Museum of Art is a museum on the campus of the University of Minnesota Duluth, in Duluth, Minnesota, United States. The Tweed Museum of Art was established in 1950 when Alice Tweed Tuohy, widow of George P. Tweed, donated their house an ...

, Duluth, Minnesota, USA and the remainder of the collection at the

Museum der Moderne A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make thes ...

, Salzburg, Austria.

Omagh

In 2010 Priseman completed two paintings on the

Omagh bombing The Omagh bombing was a car bombing on 15 August 1998 in the town of Omagh in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. It was carried out by the Real Irish Republican Army (Real IRA), a Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) splinter group who oppose ...

in Northern Ireland. 'Omagh 15.00' is based on a photograph of Market Street taken shortly before the explosion and 'Omagh Bombing 15.10' is based on a still from a video looking the opposite direction along Market Street towards the Omagh Courthouse and depicts the scene just after the explosion. The paintings are held at

Wolverhampton Art Gallery Wolverhampton Art Gallery is located in the City of Wolverhampton, in the West Midlands, United Kingdom. The building was funded and constructed by local contractor Philip Horsman (1825–1890), and built on land provided by the municipal aut ...

, England.

Fame

Priseman purchased one hundred damaged religious

icon An icon () is a religious work of art, most commonly a painting, in the cultures of the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and Catholic churches. They are not simply artworks; "an icon is a sacred image used in religious devotion". The most ...

s from E-Bay and over-painted each with a 20th-century celebrity who died prematurely from suicide or as a result of a self-destructive lifestyle. The over-painting seeks to mimic the replacement in contemporary culture of faith with fame and of saints with ‘stars’, exploring

Jarvis Cocker Jarvis Branson Cocker (born 19 September 1963) is an English musician and radio presenter. As the founder, frontman, lyricist and only consistent member of the band Pulp, he became a figurehead of the Britpop genre of the mid-1990s. Following P ...

’s idea that people believe fame is a kind of heaven that can “sort things out”. Priseman explores the territory of the cult of the celebrity, focusing on those amongst the celebrated who are troubled and at times unable to cope with the pressures of modern living. Fame exhibited at Art Exchange, Colchester, England in 2013, WhiteBox Art Center, New York in 2014 and St Marylebone Crypt, London in 2015. Over seventy of the originals are held in the permanent collection of The

University of Arizona Museum of Art The University of Arizona Museum of Art (UAMA) is an art museum in Tucson, Arizona, operated by the University of Arizona. The museum's permanent collection includes more than 6,000 works of art, including paintings, sculptures, prints and draw ...

. The balance of the project is held in the collections of

, MOMA Wales,

Mabee-Gerrer Museum of Art The Mabee-Gerrer Museum of Art is a non-profit art museum in Shawnee, Oklahoma, USA. It is located on the Oklahoma Baptist University Green Campus, being the campus of the former St. Gregory's University. The museum operated independently of St. ...

, Wayne State University Art Collection, Michigan, UMMA, Michigan, The

Dennos Museum Center The Dennos Museum Center is a fine art museum and cultural center located in Traverse City, Michigan on the campus of Northwestern Michigan College (NMC). Most notable for its permanent collection of Inuit art, the Dennos Museum opened in 1991 a ...

, Michigan and The

, Michigan.

Selected solo exhibitions

2018- ''The Longue Duree'', Yantai Art Gallery, Yantai, Tai’an Art Museum, Tai’an, Weihai Art Museum, Weihai City and Yantai Suochengli Library, Shandong Province, China. 2017- ''Fame'', The University of Arizona, Museum of Art, USA 2016 - ''Never Knowing Why'', Waterfront Gallery, University of Suffolk, Ipswich, UK 2015 - ''Outlaws'', SE9 Container Gallery, London 2014 - ''Fame'', The Crypt, St. Marylebone Parish Church, London 2014 - ''Fame'', Whitebox Art Center, New York 2013 - ''Fame'', Art Exchange, Colchester, England 2012 - ''Nazi Gas Chambers: From Memory to History'', Arch 402, London 2011 - ''No Human Way to Kill, Part II'', Whitebox Art Center, New York 2010 - ''Gas Chambers'', CoCA, New Zealand 2010 - ''No Human Way to Kill'', WhiteBox Art Center, New York 2009 - ''Gas Chambers'', The Minories Galleries, Colchester, England 2009 - ''American Execution'', The University of Essex, Colchester, England 2009 - ''No Human Way to Kill'', European Commission 12 Star Gallery, London 2009 - ''The Francis Bacon Interiors'', Huddersfield Art Gallery, England 2008 - ''American Execution,'' Dazed Gallery, London

Selected publications

Priseman, R, (2017) Contemporary Masters From Britain, Colchester, Seabrook Press, Priseman, R, (2015) ''Priseman Seabrook collection of 21st Century British Painting Catalogue 2015.'' Colchester: Seabrook Press. . Priseman, R, & Boland, M, (2015) ''Fame.'' Colchester, Seabrook Press. . Priseman, R., Bowman, M. & Pryor, J-P. (2015) ''Sumac: An Art Project by Robert Priseman.'' Colchester: Seabrook Press. . Priseman, R., Vergo, P. & Schulze, R. (2015) ''Nazi Gas Chambers: From Memory to History''. Colchester: Seabrook Press. . Priseman, R., Cummings, S. & O'Kane, P. (2015) ''Documentary Realism: Painting In A Digital Age''. Colchester: Seabrook Press. . Priseman, R., Channer, O. & Livingstone, T. (2014) ''Outlaws: An Art Project by Robert Priseman.'' Colchester: Seabrook Press. . Priseman, R., Iverson, M. & Cranfield, B. (2015) ''Hospital: An Art Project by Robert Priseman.'' Colchester: Seabrook Press. . Priseman, R. (2013) Painting the Holocaust: Can there be Art after Auschwitz? in R. Schulze (ed.) ''The Arts and the Holocaust.'' The Holocaust in History and Memory Vol. 6. Colchester: University of Essex. Priseman, R., Rodley, N., Willett, J., Harrington, C. & Ross, A. (2009) ''No Human Way To Kill.'' Colchester: Seabrook Press and University of Essex. . Peppiatt, M. & Priseman, R. (2011) ''The Francis Bacon Interiors''. Colchester, Seabrook Press. .

References

External links

Robert Priseman

Contemporary British Painting

Priseman Seabrook Collection of 21st Century British Painting
{{DEFAULTSORT:Priseman, Robert 21st-century British painters British male painters English writers Living people 1965 births British curators British art collectors English contemporary artists Alumni of the University of Essex People from Spondon 21st-century British male artists