Sam Wilson Fletcher is a British-Irish artist and writer. Born in Lewisham, London he studied chemistry and quantum mechanics at Oxford and geosciences at Harvard and the German Research Centre for Geosciences before switching to an artistic practice. In 2022 he was artist-in-residence on expeditions to Antarctica and the Canadian Arctic and Greenland, as well as aboard a ship crossing the Atlantic from Amsterdam to Quebec City. Recent and forthcoming publications include Schadenfreude (w/ Coyle Denyer, CLASSWAROOM), Def's Chicken (w/ Shaun Doyle, Sally Press), Voice Notes from the Vortex (w/ Julia July, Sally Press) CURSE TABLET (Slub Press), New Adjacent Possible Empty Niche (Veer2), Six Poems (Earthbound Poetry Series, Vol. 2), Dark Ecology (anthology: 100 Poems to Save the Earth, Seren Press) and Maybe This Is About Grief (Magma).
swilsonfletcher (at) gmail (dot) com / @samwilsonfletcher
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IMAGES
(top to bottom)
Resting in the Jungle, Having Retrieved the Cursèd Skull of a Dead Time-Travelling Fungus Man (2023), residency / installation / performance, Hortus Botanicus Leiden, image credit: Joosje Bosch
Brash ice sample, residency, Antarctic Peninsula, March 2022
Curse Tablet, book (text and images), Slub Press, April 2023
Pillar Mister (2023), monumental sculpture, peephole view
Underneath an English Village: A Massively Connected Limestone Cavern System Filled With Greenskinned Goblin-Demons Ruled Over by a Mad Narcissistic Rat King (2023), film still, project-in-progress w/ Willie J Healey
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Praise for CURSE TABLET (Slub Press, April 2023):
CURSE TABLET is fucking great. A strangely lucid abstruse enfilade that seems to take sardonic delight in its own lack of self-assuredness, even impotence, counteracting this latter with a sort of forlorn hope charge into semantic oblivions. A calligraphic sunset reel, reeling with a cursed panegyric to the mourning of one’s own error. Ultimately, though, to put it in more banal terms perhaps, this is a weird interrogation of the process of writing poetically—once again, so like himself, Sam makes a strong case for something he professes (implicitly) at not infrequent intervals to detest. Owen Brakspear, author of Water Year (Erotoplasty Editions) and Cabaret (Slub Press)
Your invitation to participate in the hyperbolic-cover-endorsement-industrial-complex has been received and will be considered by our team. If you do not receive a response within four weeks, assume you have been unsuccessful. This inbox is not monitored. Jay Drinkall
In CURSE TABLET Sam Wilson Fletcher has pulled together a strange floating historiography of the curse as writing (and back again), run up through rabid-fire Bildungsroman. Figures of the Imperial Roman army, sacred canticles, Sam’s own spit (x4) and geological detritus bind in a weaved code that owes more to Hieronymous Bosch than British Poetry Revival. CURSE TABLET twists on the profundity of the terrifying, the evil and the questionable—as he says: ‘Curse tablets do cause people to die.’ Cole Denyer, author of CC DEATH CHARTERED INSTITUTE OF PERSONNEL DEVELOPMENT)
This lexical lava stream left a permanent mark in my psyche. Jay Drinkall
This is a big and bold success, man, its ghastly iridescent l-enfilades seeping through the crack on the digital tablet (that horrible modern skeuomorph of an ancient surface for imprecations). ‘Curse Tablet’ indeed! It looks so good. Well done. Colin Leemarshall, author of Total Spiritual Refection (Earthbound Press), Nidor (Crater Press)
Curse Tablet is rich. At quite a few points I had to look stuff up to see what it meant, something I’ve not done in a while. The mobility of the thing both bothered me and impressed me, always shifting, sliding off in a new direction. Held together though by a strong sense of Sam’s voice. More than once he seems to express a dislike for the medium of writing itself. I read it aloud and I read it walking but unlike other texts I found it easier to handle read silently. The ‘squeeze’ passage which I presume is a caving term I loved. Magic. Shaun Doyle
Just got through Curse on the sofa. Wonderful, cuts the chaff of a lot of stuff I’ve read of late. Active self-address, self-question. Felt like a dog chasing Sam but the dog was saying, ‘I only have three legs you idiot.’ Will get through it again tomorrow but have been back to a few pages already—cream of the crop. Tim Wolf, author of Participation Medal (Gong Farm)
Full onslaught hedgerow abyss; integral to early summer explodING corpuscles. The reading of the Tablet. It went well. It was enjoyed. It was experienced in one sitting. As intended. Without remorse. IT IS A GOOD THING. Jim Clarke, author of Failed States
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Praise for New Adjacent Possible Empty Niche (Veer2, April 2022):
High-octane. Metaphysical-neurological data torrent, with intimations of disaster. Presentism, immense coexistent information, a rush. Love it. Kim Charnley (author of Sociopolitical Aesthetics: Art and the Crisis of Neoliberalism)
If there is mentalistic congruence between nuclear magnetic lexicography, muddy shoes obvious at tangent perpended, in acoustic resiled to followed bended hints, then here outfolded quantum theodicy is pioneered as neurological plasticity of thought, human body-syntax at life span self installed minded mirror dazzled too. J.H. Prynne
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Praise for Earthbound Poetry Series Volume 2, Number 8 (Earthbound, August 2021):
I like his wordstream lots. Sam Wilson Fletcher rewrites English like noone since William Burroughs. Dive into the vortex of the language! Ben Watson (author of Frank Zappa: Negative Dialectics of Poodle Play and Derek Bailey and the Story of Free Improvisation)
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Selected Exhibitions
as (co-)curator*
Group Show*: TROEF Leiden (as part of Peel Slowly and See), March 2024
work: Pale Face (2024), a selection of recent drawings
Group Show*: Leaves Left, Hortus Botanicus Leiden (as part of Days of Art & Science and Night of Discoveries), September 2023
work: Resting in the Jungle, Having Retrieved the Cursèd Skull of a Dead Time-Travelling Fungus Man (2023), residency / installation / performance series
Group Show: VOOR DE VORM, Gemeente (City Hall) Leiden, July-September 2023
work: Pillar Mister (2023) w/ Maarten Slof & Kim Charnley, monumental sculpture, booklet
Group Show*: Exhibition Formerly Known as Circle, De Nijverheid, July-August 2023
work: A Feeling in the Field Between Two Powerful Planets (2023), text and photograph, prints on found paper
Group Show*: Typisch Huis, Rapenburg 112a, April 2023
work: Lav Mike (2023), toilet installation, print and prerecorded audio (performed by Willie J Healey)
Group Show: Visual Poetry, View Bristol, April-May 2023
work: Curse Tablet (2023), book (text and images)
Group Show*: The Feeling of Getting Something Hot and Sticky Stuck Inside Your Armpit / When a Sweet Liquid Gathers in a Hard-To-Reach Place, Stadsgehoorzaal (City Concert Hall) Leiden, April-May 2023
work: Curse Tablet: An Excerpt (2023), prints on found paper
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Selected Residencies
Hortus Botanicus Leiden, 11-16 September 2023
Residency / installation / performance series inside the glasshouse complex of the Hortus Botanicus in Leiden
ClimateForce / 2041, 16-29 March 2022
Shipboard expedition to the Antarctic Peninsula
Ocean Endeavour, 16-31 May 2022
Atlantic crossing, Amsterdam to Quebec City
High Arctic Explorer, 13-25 August 2022
Shipboard expedition to Greenland and the High Canadian Arctic
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Selected Performances
reading: Atlantic (excerpt), Kunstroute Leiden, 23 September 2023
performance / installation: Resting in the Jungle, Having Retrieved the Cursèd Skull of a Dead Time-Travelling Fungus Man (2023),
Hortus Botanicus Leiden, 11-16 September 2023
score: Lines of Weakness (co-created with Mari Alice Conrad),
premiered: Convocation Hall, University of Alberta, 15 December 2022, performed by Conrad Sobieraj (cello), Don Ross (clarinet), James Cockell (violin), Shelley Younge (flute), Maria Protodykonova (piano), and Dr. Andriy Talpash (conductor)
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Selected Articles by Others
Maarten Slof & Sam Wilson Fletcher’s 'Pillar Mister': Thinking Big With Cardboard, Edward M Gomez, article: Brut Journal, August 2023
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Selected Publications
Schadenfreude (w/ Cole Denyer), exhibition text: CLASSWAROOM, forthcoming: June 2024
Def's Chicken (w/ Shaun Doyle), booklet: Sally Press, April 2024
Voice Notes From the Vortex (w/ Julia July), pamphlet: Sally Press, October 2023 (commissioned by Leiden International Film Festival)
The Ghost Below the Waterline, article: Chemistry World, June 2023
CURSE TABLET, chapbook: Slub Press, April 2023
New Adjacent Possible Empty Niche, pamphlet: Veer2, Spring 2022
His Funerary Blush & Sevens, Tears in the Fence, Winter 2021/22 (Issue 75)
Six Poems, pamphlet: Earthbound Poetry Series, August 2021 (Volume 2, Number 8)
Dark Ecology, anthology: 100 Poems to Save the Earth, Seren, July 2021
Maybe This Is About Grief, Magma, April 2021 (Issue 79)
Flawed, The Dawntreader, Winter 2020/21 (Issue 53)
Below Red Cliffs, The Dawntreader, Autumn 2020 (Issue 52)
Bald Moon & Sea Stack, The Dawntreader, Winter 2018/19 (Issue 45)
PRINT & WEB
///, Die Leere Mitte, September 2022 (Issue 15)
(i)ndra, AIR-RAID & Die Flut, Word For/Word, July 2021 (Issue 37)
AXIS LEXIS, Die Leere Mitte, February 2021 (Issue 9)
WEB
Pillar Mister (w/ Kim Charnley), exhibition text: Tenement Press, forthcoming: Autumn 2023
The Ghost Below the Waterline, article: Chemistry World, May 2023
petrel petrel, poem: NOON, March 2023 (Issue 23, p. 162)
Hyaloclastics: an Excerpt, Guillotine Curse & Larsen, poems: Blackbox Manifold, January 2023 (Issue 28)
from Konstantin Simonov, prose & image: Eternal Interstice, June 2022 (Issue 10, p. 2-3)
Fried Genghis & The Pearly Queens of Unsolicited Advice, poems: Anthropocene, January 2022
Boltzmann & Blue Pill, poems: Blackbox Manifold, August 2021 (Issue 26)
Kingley Vale, poem: Ink, Sweat and Tears, April 2021
The Sweet Track, poem: The Kindling, March 2021 (Issue 9)
milk / ether & north and north and more north, poems: NOON, December 2020 (Issue 17 & 18, p. 53-54)
Toast to the Spring & waveformed, poems: The Learned Pig, December 2020
the small dark light, poem: Streetcake Magazine, October 2020 (Issue 69, p. 15)
Five Postcard Poems, images: M58, October 2020
Blue, poem: Ink, Sweat and Tears, April 2020 (shortlisted for Pick of the Month)
How Many Artists?, image: M58, December 2019
Night Out, poem: Ink, Sweat and Tears, September 2019
Daddy is a Mackerel Now, poem: Ink, Sweat and Tears, February 2019
Sunday, poem: Ink, Sweat and Tears, August 2018 (shortlisted for Pick of the Month)
Sam Wilson Fletcher