Stuart Semple (b. 1980) is an artist, author, curator and activist.
After a near-death experience as a teenager, whilst studying fine art at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Stuart Semple dedicated his life to being an artist.
Although diverse in its presentation, his body of work orbits around a handful of recurring themes: anxiety, society, cultural history, technology, connection, community, and freedom, working across painting, sculpture, happenings, and online.
Semple has enjoyed fifteen solo exhibitions dedicated to his work in London, Milan, New York, Hong Kong, and Los Angeles. His works have also been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions, fairs, and biennials, and at institutions including the Barbican, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, The Goss-Michael Foundation, Denver Art Museum, and The Whitworth, amongst others.
He has created large-scale public projects for cities including Melbourne, Dublin, London, Moscow, Manchester, and Denver and presented performance pieces and happenings at Dulwich Picture Gallery, The Bentway in Toronto, Hong Kong Arts Centre, and Glastonbury Festival.
Semple is regularly featured across the media and has seen major features in The Times, The Guardian, Modern Painters, Frieze, Wired, i-D, the BBC, Vogue, and several others. His BBC Radio Four documentary, Hostile Design, was nominated for a Radio Academy Award in 2019.
As a writer, he contributed a monthly feature to Art of England magazine for more than five years and has written for The Guardian, Spanish Vogue, ArtLyst, and Huffington Post.
A keen speaker on democracy, accessibility, and the power of art to transform mental health and the public realm, Semple has spoken at Frieze London, Oxford Union, The Southbank Centre, and the Institute of Contemporary Art.
Semple regularly curates exhibitions that explore society and has done so for galleries in London, Milan, and New York.
During the pandemic, Stuart Semple founded GIANT, the UK’s largest artist-run gallery space outside London, in his hometown of Bournemouth.
