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Ben Langlands & Nikki Bell

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Portrait of Ben Langlands & Nikki Bell in their Whitechapel Studio by Lucinda Douglas Menzies.

Artists Ben Langlands Nikki Bell are based in London. They met and began collaborating in 1977 while studying Fine Art at Middlesex Polytechnic. Their artistic practice ranges widely from sculpture, to film & video, innovative digital media projects, and full-scale architecture. Their art is focused on a poetic and conceptual exploration of architecture and the coded systems of mass-communication and exchange we use to negotiate an increasingly fast-changing technological world.

Langlands & Bell have exhibited widely internationally throughout their career including exhibitions at Tate Britain and Tate Modern, Serpentine Gallery and Whitechapel Art Gallery, in London, IMMA (Irish Museum of Modern Art) Dublin, Kunsthalle Bielefeld, Haus der Kunst, and Hamburger Bahnhof, Germany, MoMA, and the New Museum, New York, Centre for British Art, Yale, USA, Central House of the Artist, Moscow, State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, Venice Biennale, Seoul Biennale, CCA Kitakyushu, Kitakyushu, and TN Probe, Tokyo, Japan.

In 2002 Langlands & Bell were commissioned as “War Artists” by the Imperial War Museum to research The Aftermath of September 11 and the War in Afghanistan. In 2003 they won the BAFTA Award for Interactive Arts Installation and in 2004 were nominated for the Turner Prize for The House of Osama bin Laden the trilogy of art works they made on their return. Since 2003 The House of Osama bin Laden artworks have been exhibited in 17 museums and galleries in 11 different countries worldwide.

Artworks by Langlands & Bell are in the collections of many prominent national and international art museums including the British Museum, Imperial War Museum, Tate, V&A in London, MoMA New York, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, USA, Center for British Art, Yale, USA, State Hermitage Museum St Petersburg, Russia. Learn more on their website.

The books mentioned in the interview: Corrections & Collections – Architectures for Art & Crime by Joe Day, and This Brutal World, by Peter Chadwick

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Domain, Water soluble house paint, 556 cm x 1583 cm. Milton Keynes Art Gallery, UK, 2005
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Infinite Loop 2016, Piezo pigment inkjet print on Hahnemuhle Photo Rag paper. Courtesy Alan Cristea Gallery, London
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