Bob & Roberta Smith: You Are an Artist - signed copy

This book, written and signed by British contemporary artist Bob and Roberta Smith, is the antidote to artistic bashfulness. If you’ve ever wondered how to become an artist, Smith has the answer: you’re already doing it. You’re already enrolled in the biggest art school there is. The world is an art school, and you are an artist.

A series of practical exercises and creative provocations, combined with a thought-provoking meditation on art practice, the book encourages you to explore your potential as an artist. Drawing on his experience as an art-school teacher, Smith writes the book as a kind of art school, helping the reader to work out what kind of artist they are, and what they can achieve.

Hilarious, startling and moving, the book brings to life a series of lessons about the nature of art and inspiration, each with its own set of creative prompts. It’s full of ideas, tips and practical examples, illustrated with documentary photographs of Bob and Roberta Smith’s own work, especially created for the book. His riotous paintings and installations are set alongside discussions of time, place, looking, thinking, stealing and becoming, with enlightening forays into the history of art and creativity.

Bob and Roberta Smith is the pseudonym of British contemporary artist, author and musician Patrick Brill (born 1963). An outspoken art education advocate, the idea that political campaigns are actually extended art works is central to their work, and they are best known for their ‘slogan’ art in the form of painted signs.

• Artist Bob and Roberta Smith
• ISBN 9780500239933
• Hardback Yes