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STATEMENT

I’m a visual artist who explores relationships between art, knowledge and power.

In my east London studio I create fractal versions of the beautiful and devastating geometry traced on this planet by people in public office. I print aerial photographs of fascinating geographies - Essex, New Mexico, the MeKong delta - in inkjet and then manipulate them with sprays and floods of water. I paint thin washes of desaturated paint onto thick watercolour paper. I let the paint desiccate and split into the strata of its constituent colours. I laser engrave the resulting terrains with satellite imagery of the infrastructure of modern life - gridiron roads, circular irrigation systems, pixelated data maps. Organic materials feature extensively in my work, including cross sections of trees (yew, poplar, plane), weathered greenhouse glass, clay and dug-up earth - all of which end up subject to mechanical processes and patterns.

I regularly situate my practice in government institutions. I have dispersed the contents of thick scientific reports around the walls of Whitehall to create embodied engagement with evidence. I have CNC-milled street maps into wood to help urban planners think kinaesthetically about how pedestrians are affected by road design. I have hung 432 medicine bottles at different heights in a colonial era wharf to manifest the 20 year gap in healthy life expectancy across the UK. Over the last decade I have led a programme to bring other artists into government, linking with the dialogical and relational activity of the Artists Placement Group. I have mirrored this sense of fluidity and exchange on paper, printing key policy documents and manipulating them, with water, into unexpected terrains of knowledge and power. For all of these endeavours, the enquiry is the same: how do aesthetics relate to decisions about our planet?

CV

Stephen RG Bennett is a visual artist and policy professional. Stephen has exhibited widely including at the Tate Exchange, Tobacco Dock, the Andrew Brownsword Gallery, the Royal Geographical Society and Terre Verte Gallery. Stephen often develops work and projects in partnership with other organisations. Previously this has included the Royal Society, CERN, Nesta and the Government Art Collection. Stephen is a Champion for the Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre and was a Clore 16 Fellow, sponsored by the Wellcome Trust. Stephen has undertaken residencies at CERN (Geneva), Joya Arte y Ecologia (Andalusia), Lumen (Atina, Italy) and Grizedale Arts (Cumbria, UK). Stephen is Co-Head of Policy Lab in the UK Civil Service, and has previously worked in all corners of government, from Jobcentre Plus to the Government Office for Science. Stephen is the founder and lead artist of MANIFEST, a programme which supports artists, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, to explore how their work can enrich policymaking.

Born 1982 in London, lives in London

PUBLICATIONS / PRESS (SELECTION)

Anderson, M. and van Dijk, G. (2020) “In Conversation with Cat Drew and Stephen Bennett” in Anderson, M. and van Dijk, G. (2020) Explorers

Bakhshi, H. et al. (2023) “Industry Insight: Stephen Bennett” in Bakshi, H. et al (2023) The State of Creativity, pp60-61

Barnett, H., Cohen, N. and Holme, A. (2021) “Polymathic pedagogies: creating the conditions for interdisciplinary enquiry in art and science” in Star Rogers, H. et al. eds. (2021) Routledge Handbook of Art, Science and Technology Studies. London: Routledge 

Bennett, S. (2021) A role for the arts in policy? Clore Leadership, London

Bennett, S., Downey, F., Light, J. (2018) “The Museum of Extraordinary Objects: How a Museum from the future is shaping science policy today”, SciArt Magazine, Vol. 33, October 2018

Bennett, S., Drew, C., Bargman, L. Ridgway, P. (2019) “Forest of the Future?” Radical Visions of Future Government, pp113-125

Bennett, S. and Kaszynska, P. (2024) MANIFEST: Artists, policy and the process of making change

Black R., Bennett S., Thomas S., Beddington J. (2011) “Climate Change: Migration as Adaptation”, Nature, 478, pp 447-449

Bright, R. (2017) “Stephen Bennett: Data visualisation and maps”, Interalia Magazine, 32, April 2017

Pembroke, B. and Saltemarshe, E. (2019) “How art and culture can help us rethink time” in BBC Future, May 22nd 2019

exhibitions (selection)

Barbara Steveni: I Find Myself, Modern Art Oxford, Oxford, UK (2025)

MANIFEST, Somerset House, London, UK (2025)

Waterlines, Royal Geographical Society, London (2024)

Changing Landscapes, Arc Studios, London (2023)

MANIFEST: Art~Policy, Bloc Projects, Sheffield, UK (2023)

Reimagining Joya, Thames-side Studio Gallery, London (2022)

Last Chance Saloon, Terre Verte Gallery, Cornwall, UK (2021)

Glass House, Lumen Gallery, London (2021)

Reconnecting, Bermondsey Project Space, London (2021)

Wilderness for the Mind, online (2020)

Landlines, Royal Geographical Society, London (2019)

Forest Of The Future?, Pictorem Gallery, London (2019)

The Joke’s On Us! The Mill, London (2019)

Visions of Science, Andrew Brownsword Gallery, Bath, UK (2018)

FutureFest by Nesta, Tobacco Dock, London (2018)

Cosmic Perspectives, Ugly Duck, London (2018)

Fields, CSM, London (2018)

Lumen Residency exhibition, Crypt Gallery, London (2018)

TEDx Whitehall, The Royal Society, London (2018)

Lumen, Chiesa San Francesco, Atina, Italy (2017)

Entangled: CMS/CSM, Four Corners Gallery, London (2017)

Somehow You and I Collide, Wringer & Mangle, London (2017)

This is an Art School, Tate Modern, London (2017)

Open Studio, CSM, London (2016)

AWARDS, RESIDENCIES, OTHER

Visiting lecturer, University of Shetland/Highlands and Islands (2024)

Arts and Humanities Research Council/Clore Research Bursary (2022-23)

Grizedale Arts Residency (2022)

Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts (RSA) (2020)

Visiting Lecturer, University of Oxford (2020)

Arts and Humanities Research Council/Clore Research Bursary (2020)

Industry Champion for the Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre, led by Nesta (2020)

Clore Leadership Fellowship (sponsored by the Wellcome Trust) (2019-22)

Visiting lecturer, London College of Communications, UCL (2019)

Shortlisted for the MullenLowe NOVA Awards (2018)

Awarded the University of Art London’s Environment International Artist Residency Programme resident artist at Joya: Arte + Ecología (2017)

Residency at CERN, Geneva, Switzerland (2016)