Why Making Bad Work Is the Secret to Great Art with Simone Brewster

Welcome back to Extraordinary Creatives. Today's guest is the remarkable Simone Brewster. Simone is an artist whose work moves between sculpture, painting, jewellery, furniture, architecture, and public installation. On paper those disciplines might seem worlds apart, but beneath them all is one beautifully consistent line of enquiry. 

Simone creates what she calls intimate architectures: objects and spaces that shape how we feel, how we connect and how we experience belonging.

Drawing on Black diasporic histories, architecture, material culture and memory, her work feels both timeless and unmistakably contemporary. You may have seen her exhibition at the Design Museum in London, or her work in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington D.C.

In this conversation we talk about growing up in London, finding your creative handwriting, why making bad work is essential to making great work, and how to balance self-initiated projects with commissions, jewellery with public spaces, and creativity with business.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

So many creatives end up defining themselves by what they make, when actually it's the enquiry underneath the work that matters most. If you stay true to that, your work can evolve across disciplines whilst still feeling unmistakably yours.

Developing your creative handwriting means accepting that bad work will sit alongside the good. Not as a failure, but as a necessary part of the line of enquiry that makes the work unmistakably yours.

Creativity and commerce aren't opposing forces. Learning how to build a business around your creativity gives your practice the time, space, and stability it needs to flourish - creating the conditions for your best work to exist.

BEST MOMENTS

“The difference isn't whether you make bad work. It's whether you're willing to keep going, learn from it and make the next piece.”

“You never know who is watching you….do the work - share the work.”

"Your peers are going to be one of the most valuable resources you ever have."