About

Sam Treadaway is a British artist, writer and curator-producer, living and working in South West England. His interdisciplinary practice includes sculpture, drawing, book-arts, and olfactory scent-based works. Often making use of existing frictions between aesthetic form and utilitarian function, he realigns, edits and transforms found materials, objects, structures and systems thus generating new meanings and outcomes. Within his olfactory work he has collaborated with the perfumer Jasmin Otto with whom he shares in interest in exploring the transformative potential of scent as a countermove to the predominantly visual-centric language of Late Capitalism. The interplay between the arts and other fields of knowledge (such as science, activism, philosophy, music and perfumery) often inform and inspire and inform his practice.

Since 2011 Sam Treadaway has led, co-curated, produced and directed Revolve:R, an international and multidisciplinary collaboration. The project explores a transmission of ideas through collaborative forms of communication, from the physical and tactile to the digital and intangible, in which contemporary artists, poets, filmmakers, and musicians, from around the world (to date England, Mainland Europe, North America, Russia, China, Australia and South Africa) produce original artworks, poetry, films, soundscapes and songs in response to a sequential series of artworks. The project to date has resulted in three bookwork publications, most recently Revolve:R, edition four (Arrow Bookworks, 2023).

Sam Treadaway has exhibited and completed commission and residencies within the UK and internationally. He has devised and led participatory workshops, taught as a visiting lecturer, and given public talks about his work in galleries and other cultural spaces. He has received funding from arts organisations such as: Arts Council England, Intellect Books, AHRC, ARC, Visual Arts South West, a-n, and Axisweb. His work features within public collections worldwide including: Tate Artists’ Book Collection, Tate Britain, London / MoMA Artists’ Book Collection, New York City, New York, USA / The British Library, London / The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, USA / California Institute of the Arts, San Francisco, California, USA / MIT, Massachusetts, USA / Glasgow School of Art, Glasgow, Scotland / Goldsmiths School of Arts, University of London, London / The Sutton Gallery, Edinburgh, Scotland / Museo Microcollection, Italy / The Burton Gallery, Bideford / The National Poetry Library, Southbank Centre, London / Artphilein Editions and Choisi Gallery, Lugano, Switzerland, CH.

Commissions have included an ACE-funded commission for Bideford Black: The Next Generation (shown at The Burton Gallery, Bideford, October, 2015) in which the artist collaborated with a perfumer and Bristol Botanic Gardens within the creation of an olfactory installation exploring the origins and commodification of the raw material that is Bideford Black (specifically Tree Ferns forests of the Carboniferous period) and its environmental impact. For Translation Games, the artist created Sniff Disc, an olfactory work resulting from the transformation of a poem into scent. This work was shown with an accompanying talk and performance at the National Poetry Library, Southbank Centre London, March 2014). For the Curfew Tower residency project (Cushendall, Northern Ireland) the artist designed and produced a large format sketchbook (approximately 100 cm height) for patron (ex KLF frontman) Bill Drummond.

Residency projects have included that with the AirSpace Gallery (Stoke-on-Trent, UK, June 2016) during which the artist worked collaboratively with the gallery team as well as local businesses and community groups to transform the gallery space into a micro-brewery producing mead (honey wine). Collaborative aspects of this ACE-funded project involved contacting local businesses, groups, and individuals so as to source all ingredients and equipment needed within the mead production. During the residency the artist also collaborated with local arts collective B-Arts within the delivery of a public workshop at the gallery. Much of the work created during the residency and the resulting multi-media installation explored conceptual connections between the fields of scent and music. Residences have also included a Artist & Writer residency with The National Trust and a residency with ARC (Romainmôtier, Switzerland) where the artists fieldwork research included discussion with a local herbalist which led to the creation of large scale incense cones made from locally sourced medicinal plants.

Sam Treadaway grew up in rural England with his mother (teacher) father (architect) and brothers (actors). Alongside the arts Sam Treadaway’s area’s of interest include human and animal rights, environmental sustainability, meditation and travel.


Projects in progress: 

> Revolve:R
> KRATE
> Scent (of a Show)

Previous exhibitions, publications and projects include:

Revolve:R, edition four (Arrow Bookworks, 2023); Carbon-Borders-Voices (2022); The Mechanism (Arrow Bookworks, 2021); Revolve:R, edition three (Arrow Bookworks & Intellect Books Bristol, UK / Chicago, USA, 2018); nano 1.2, Barnard Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa (2018); Translating across Linguistic and Sensory Borders (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018); 12:10  12.06.2017 46˚41.617’N 006˚27.899’E, Oakmoss, Evernia prunastri, Espace dAM, Romainmôtier, Switzerland (2017); Revolve:R, edition two, James Hockey and Foyer Galleries, UCA, Farnham, UK (2017); R:R, Hours, Bristol, UK (2017); RISE, AirSpace Gallery, Stoke-on-Trent, UK (2016); Imaginary Worlds, Oriel Davies Gallery, Newtown, Wales (2016); Revolve:R, edition two (Arrow Bookworks, 2015); Bideford Black: The Next Generation, Burton Gallery, Bideford, UK (2015); PROTECHT, Bank Space Gallery (in association with The Whitechapel Gallery), London, UK (2015); Room&Book, ICA, London, UK (2015); Revolve:R, edition one, Choisi Gallery, Lugano, Switzerland (2014); Engagement and Entrapment, Binyamin Gallery, Tel Aviv, Israel (2014); 63_360, B&B Gallery, Folkestone, UK (2014); Translation Games, National Poetry Library, London, UK (2014); Revolve:R, edition one (Arrow Bookworks, 2013); Emergency12, Castlefield Gallery, Manchester, UK (2012); The Paper Cooperative, Spacex Gallery, Exeter, UK (2011).

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