Sam Francis Read decides to include his middle name when talking about himself as there are a lot of Sam Read’s in the world and so he wanted his name to be more distinguished and unique. During the artist talk, he mentioned that he isn’t in touch with anyone from his BA degree. He is currently doing a masters course at Leeds. He liked the fact that if you search up your name into google and add artist to it, you usually find a landscape artist.
Sam Francis Read is an artist who enjoys working with memory and animated elements. His focus is on drawing and digital compositions that extend to print, sculpture and moving image. He likes to use imagery to show him new possibilities of collections of the rehabilitation of cultural detritus trivia and phantasmagoria, as these categories really resonate with him.
After he graduated from DMU, he went to Two Queens which is one of the best studios and artist led galleries in Leicester. He joined the summer school program and they helped him identify his unique voice. He got to exhibit his work in a small space which involved contemporary ideas of collected mythology. This is where his love of fantasy and niche media began. He made a woodcut which he explored a catastrophe of a post apocalyptic situation which was the reason for the inclusion of steel girders and everything being in black and white. He decided to branch out by including primary colours (blue, red and yellow). The use of primary colours in his work was evident in his solo exhibition at Collective in Nottingham. Since then, this has been renamed. There is a space called IK Sheds in which you are able to wear party hats whilst walking around the gallery, these hats also had a sculptural function. The hats had interesting pop colours and shapes.
Sam Francis Read had an exhibition in Flat 5 which is another artist led space based in their front room. This isn’t very well known as they don’t publicize events a lot and so it is based heavily on social networks. You can apply for a residency there and it is known as the sofa residency as you are based on the sofa for most of your time there. Sam had a dual exhibition with Craig Parr focused on Blue Monday which is an allegedly depressing day of the year. During this time, companies try to sell package holidays to cheer people up. He wanted to turn this idea on its head and create an alternative to the holiday, getting away from the idea of what an holiday is. They called it Red Monday so instead if it being sad/miserable, they had a party in the space and the windows/signs were inspired by January sales due to the time of the exhibition, with everything closing down. They decided to use vinyl as this is usually the material in shop windows and formed machines for that. There were drawings and paintings on the wall and moving image which was the reason for projections. He enjoyed working with Craig as it was funny and an unsubtle piece of advertising.
He did a project where he worked with found objects and took them apart and changed them. After he had changed the object, he then photographed it and uploaded it to google images which gave a different image result. He then edited the image in photoshop and made it so you couldn’t tell what the original object was anymore. He then drew from these images. This process was very creative and shows how you can look at one object in a range of ways.
Sam Read made clear the importance of working with other people in collaborations which is something I would like to do to better myself and have a lot of connections in the art world.