Simon Faithfull is British-born artist living and working in Berlin. His practice has been described as an attempt to understand and explore the planet as a sculptural object – to test its limits, to sense its processes and to report back on how it feels. His practice takes a variety of forms – ranging from video, to digital drawing, to installation work and to writing. Faithfull’s artworks often present a picture of humankind’s fragile position on a ball of rock spinning in space. Recent works have explored Homo sapien’s entangled interdependence with the perhaps trillion other species of ‘Earthlings’ that we share this planet with. Within his work Faithfull often travels to new contexts and collaborates with scientists and local people that help him bring back a personal vision from the ends of the world.

Recent projects include a collaboration with an ant that resulted in a permanent tattoo; a film and performance shot in a watery, modernist ruin found off the coast of Florida; a journey across Europe and Africa tracing the 0º Greenwich Meridian; a live video-transmission from the deliberate sinking of a ship to create an artificial reef and a film featuring the artist walking the perimeter of a rapidly shrinking island. Other older projects include a video-work recording the journey of a domestic chair as it was carried to the edge of space beneath a weather balloon, and a drawing project sending back live digital-drawings from a two-month journey to Antarctica onboard an ice-breaker.

Faithfull’s artworks feature in many collections around the world including the collection of Centre Pompidou, Paris, The Government Art Collection, England and The Arts Council Collection, England, amongst others. Recent solo-exhibitions include: Galerie Polaris (Paris, 2023), Atchugarry Foundation Miami (USA, 2021), Natural History, Berlin and The Exchange, Penzance (UK, 2019). Recent group-exhibitions include: CaixaForum (Madrid, 2023), EDF Foundation (Paris, 2022), Museum Ploschad Mira (Russia, 2021), Parafin Gallery (London, 2018), Maison Rouge (Paris, 2018), ACC Gwangju (South Korea, 2016). In 2019 the first iteration of Faithfull’s public artwork ‘The Erratics’ was unveiled in Cambridge University (UK), and in 2010 his largest permanent public artwork to date ‘Liverpool-to-Liverpool’ was unveiled at the centre of Liverpool (UK).

Fairthfull’s artworks are represented by Galerie Polaris in Paris and he is a professor at the Slade School of Fine Art, UCL, London. Faithfull was born in Braziers Park – a utopian community in Ipsden, Oxfordshire. He studied at Central St Martins and then the University of Reading.