(b. Sutton, 1997)
Artist Statement
Sam Wills' practice explores the political and poetic potential of the unannounced encounter within the everyday. Engaging with themes of colonial memory, the co-option of art within social displacement, and alternative forms of memorialisation, projects often intervene in existing systems and narratives. Whether through sculptures that disrupt planning applications for luxury developments or by changing his name to re-remember and correct a family myth tied to British imperial history, works are intended to present themselves in unexpected and often 'non-art' contexts.
Playing with serendipity and a vernacular language, objects such as birdboxes, beer bottles, and lime bikes are refunctioned as vehicles of intervention and direct action. Working across public space, bureaucratic structures, and social situations, projects frequently establish the conditions for an event to unfold in distant futures - using time as a material to defer reception through acts of camouflage, slowness, or posthumous activation. Wills aims to create encounters that resist spectacle, embedding themselves instead within the infrastructures of everyday life or as a part of his own embodied existence.
Education
Goldsmiths, University of London (Art and Politics MA, 2023- 2025)
Chelsea College Of Art (BA Fine Art, First Class Honours, 2016-2019)
Camberwell College Of Art (Foundation Diploma in Art and Design, 2015-2016)
Public Commission
2023 - 2024 Desire Paths, Public Realm, commissioned by Turf Projects, Croydon, UK
Shortlisted
2024 Bloomberg New Contemporaries
2024 Minus20degrees, Flachau, Austria
Selected Exhibitions
2025
Dwellings Rehomed, The Design Museum, London
The Floor is Lava, BowArts, Shaftesbury Avenue, London
2024
Together and Apart, No format Gallery, London
2023
Desire Paths, Turf Projects, Croydon
Allodium, 28 Devonshire Road, London
A Place Bears The Name, Tension Fine Art, London
2022
Annual Open Exhibition 2022, Southwark Park Gallery, London
Page Masters Zine Fair, South London Gallery, London
Multiplied, GALLERY GALLERY, Antwerp, Belgium
Cave Summer Exhibition, Cave Gallery, London
2021
Stuck in a timeloop, CheriHarari, Online
Auntie-Freeze 2021, Cave Gallery, London
2020
30works30days, 12ø, Online Exhibition
2019
Chelsea College of Art Degree Show 2019, Chelsea College of Art, London
Interim Show, Chelsea College of Art, London
2018
Translations, Chelsea College of Art, London
Auntie-Freeze 2018, Cave Gallery, London
Bjork Baby, Chelsea College of Art, London
Common Ground, Kennington Park, London
Writing / Published In:
2025
N.37 Transfiguration, Arts of the Working Class, Berlin
2022
MNAN Zine, Metal Institute, UK, here
TIM Magazine #3, TIM Magazine, Antwerp
THE PAPER, Good Press, Glasgow