about
Simon Coates is a multi-media artist based in London, UK. Coates’ practise is predicated on societal mores and behaviours as communicating modes, and he uses digital media (print, film and sound), live and recorded production, writing and curated events as tools for exploration. Coates has produced commissions and worked in partnership with Yinka Shonibare’s Guest Projects, Google Arts & Culture, the British Council, the Sound and Music charity, the British Music Collection, tech companies Sonos and Bang & Olufsen, rights organisations War On Want, In Place of War, and more.
Since 2015 Coates has managed Tse Tse Fly Middle East, the non-profit arts and activism project he founded in Dubai that examines the role of artists in the struggle for human rights and freedom of expression. Tse Tse Fly’s work extends from a monthly radio programme on UK arts station Resonance EXTRA (between 2015 and 2023) and Moscow-based New New World (from 2017 to 2020) to live community arts events, artworks, and curated exhibitions, all produced by Coates. A selection of the Tse Tse Fly project’s audio and visual work is part of the British Library’s archive after the institution deemed it culturally significant and, in 2020, Coates was honoured with a Special Mention in the Amnesty International Brave Awards for his work with Tse Tse Fly Middle East. He has produced four Tse Tse Fly Middle East albums of experimental music: Easy Listening Vol.1, Instruments of the State, These Are Our Friends Too and This Is Kafala.
Coates’s artwork has been exhibited and screened at - among others - the Whitechapel Gallery (London), Coventry Cathedral, Conway Hall (London), Tunisia's Tunis Central gallery, Bristol's Caraboo Projects, Mülheim an der Ruhr in Germany, Turin's Paratissima Art Fair, Berlin's Art Claims Impulse Gallery, Egypt's Cairotronica, and at venues and festivals in the USA, Italy, Turkey, Spain, Argentina, Poland, Chile, and the Netherlands. In 2020 he was one of three shortlisted artists for the Kerdroya community land art project in Cornwall. In 2023 he premiered a new body of artwork at the Arrrtoury Art Festival in South Korea and his short film 'Crow' was mentioned in the British Film Institute's Sight & Sound magazine's Best Films of 2023.
Writing is a key part of his practice, and Coates is a member of the written content teams for Dua Lipa's Service95 platform, Discogs and The Art Journal, and is an art critic for the New York Observer. He also has bylines for The Wire magazine, City AM, Broadsheet London and others, and has written for platforms including the Grammys website, Trebuchet magazine, The New Internationalist, (Scottish daily newspaper) The National and Index on Censorship magazine. Published pieces include interviews with artists Jane and Louise Wilson, John Costi, Shilpa Gupta, Constant Dullaart, Soheila Sokhanvari, and Matthew Arthur Williams, curators from Tate Britain and the Barbican, Belarus Free Theatre founder Nicolai Khalezin, director Ivo van Hove, profiling William Kentridge and Jan Švankmajer, exploring what it's like to own a Banksy artwork, and more. Coates has also made work under the names Ubu Kung, Tse Tse Fly Middle East, and A Taxi For My Uncle pseudonyms. The Ubu Kung project is ongoing, and focuses on experimental music and film. Coates released a collection of Ubu Kung tracks on the 2026 album, Greatest Hits.
Coates lived in the UAE from 2011 to 2017, and from 2013 to 2015 he managed the Dubai Community Theatre and Arts Centre, programming theatre and live work from Trevor Noah, Chicago Shakespeare Company, Gulzar and the Moscow City Ballet, and curating art projects featuring Jeremy Deller, Mohammed Kazem, Alvin Lucier and more. As a result, he is a member of the British Council Gulf Alumni.