About me
Doug Fishbone is an American artist living in London. He earned an MA in Fine Art at Goldsmiths College 2003. His film and performance work is heavily influenced by the rhythms of stand-up comedy - leading one critic to call him a “stand-up conceptual artist” – and examines some of the more problematic aspects of contemporary life in an amusing and disarming way.
His 2010 film project Elmina, made collaboratively in Ghana, had its world premiere at Tate Britain in 2010 and was nominated for an African Movie Academy Award in Nigeria in 2011. He is currently at work on a follow-up to be filmed in Ghana later this year.
Fishbone curated Doug Fishbone’s Leisure Land Golf, a bespoke art/crazy golf course featuring some of the UK’s leading artists, at the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015, and the course subsequently travelled to Nottingham, Derby and York. In 2015 he also collaborated with the Dulwich Picture Gallery in London, one of the nation’s most prestigious Old Masters collections, on a solo project involving switching one of the Gallery’s masterpieces with a replica made in China. Other recent projects include a series of guided bus tours in Aberdeen as part of the Look Again Festival in 2016, and a series of riverboat performances on the River Thames called Doug Fishbone’s “Booze Cruise”, originally commissioned as part of the Mayor of London’s Thames Festival in 2013 and 2014.
Selected solo exhibitions include Tate Britain, London (2010-11), Rokeby, London (2010-11, and 2009), Gimpel Fils, London (2006) and 30,000 Bananas in Trafalgar Square (2004). Selected group exhibitions include Rude Britannia: British Comic Art, Tate Britain (2010), Busan Biennale, Busan, South Korea (2008); Laughing in a Foreign Language, Hayward Gallery (2008), London; British Art Show 6, Newcastle, Bristol, Nottingham and Manchester (2006).
Teaching
In addition to his lecturing at Westminster, Fishbone teaches regularly at LCC and Middlesex University in London. He is a frequent guest lecturer and has been invited to speak and give tutorials at more than 60 schools and faculties throughout the country, including Goldsmiths College, The Slade, Royal College of Art, Chelsea College, Oxford University, Christies, Sothebys, and Newcastle University.
He has also created and serves as the lead tutor of a special course at the Zabludowicz Collection, one of Britain's leading private collections, which offers young artists the chance to develop their studio work in an intense and challenging week-long seminar alongside leading guest artists from around the world. Now in its 6th year, the Master Class programme, has quickly established itself as one of London's most innovative educational opportunities for recent graduates.
Research
For more information on Fishbone's studio and teaching work: