b. 1983, United Kingdom
Working under the pseudonym Bill Posters, Barnaby Francis is an artist-researcher, author and facilitator who is interested in art as research and critical practice. Posters’ works often interrogate the persuasion architectures and power relations that exist in the public space and online. He works collaboratively across the arts, sciences and advocacy fields on conceptual, sculptural, new media, net art, installation and synthesized video art projects.
Since 2017, Posters has extended his focus to explore computational forms of image making including deep fakes and deep video portraits whilst critically interrogating the associated online architectures that define the digital influence industry. This marks a natural progression for the former street artist into an alternate ‘commons’ and reveals interesting territory for the application of critical theory to contemporary issues concerning computational propaganda, dataism, human rights, surveillance capitalism and democracy.
Bill Posters was born in 1983 and lives and works in Manchester.
His works have recently been shown at the Museum Jorn, Silkeborg; the Artmossphere III Biennale, Moscow; the Centre for Contemporary Art, Barcelona; the 50th International Poster Biennale, Warsaw; the Architectural Association, London; and the Design Museum, London.
Posters’ works are held in the collections of the BFI National Film Archive, London; the People’s History Museum, Manchester; and the Poster Museum at Wilanów, Warsaw.