Something & Son
Former Somerset House Studios resident

Something & Son

Artists exploring solutions for social and environmental issues via everyday scenarios.

Somerset House Studios
New Wing

Something & Son (Andy Merritt and Paul Smyth) explores social and environmental issues via everyday scenarios criss-crossing the boundaries between the visual arts, architecture and activism. They create permanent installations, functional sculptures and public performance that build communities, create new ecologies and force a reappraisal and understanding of some of the biggest social and environmental issues of our time. Their work often take the familiar as a starting point from which to rethink our notions of physical and social structures including farm shops, restaurants, churches, shrines, bathhouses, jewellery stores, factories, fashion stores, recording studios and the stock exchanges.

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Peckham Palms
Peckham Palms | Southwark Council, Greater London Authority Location: Peckham, London

Past projects include A Common Ground for Tate Britain (2018); The Peoples Brick Company, Now Gallery, London (2016); Recording in Progress (Artangel and PJ Harvey), Somerset House, (2015); Royal Botanical Gardens Kew (2015); Ek-Bic Ye-Ic, (2014), Istanbul Design Biennial (2014); Folkestone Triennial, (2014), Floating Garden, The Gwangju Design Biennale, South Korea (2014) (curated by Ai Wei Wei); Future Baroque, Tate Modern (2013); Manchester International Festival (2012); Milan Design Week (2012); Cultural Olympia (2012); the Wellcome Collection (2012); and FARM:shop, (2011).

Their projects have been featured in the New York Times (Design Honors List), The London Olympics (Gifts of the Games) and The Observer Newspapers (New Radicals). 

Andy and Paul are also founders of Makerversity.

...so strikingly original and demonstrates a rare ingenuity and wit... At the heart of their work is a really ethical position on the environment.

Beatrice Galilee, The Metropolitan Museum of Art (from a New York Times article)

Something & Son will focus on the development of their long term project The Manuals. It centres around a book that acts as a practical and philosophical guide for exploring how we can build rather destroy ecosystems through our daily actions. Using land art as prototypes ideas playfully re-interrupt the objects and infrastructure that underpin our lives so they can be of use to the 8+ million others species calling Earth home.