Preston Likely Biog.

I am a Hull-born artist, leaving the city in 1993, having finished a Fine Art degree course at Humberside University Art College, specialising in photography and film. 

After leaving Hull, I went  on to study an M.A. in Sheffield; however, half way through the course, at the end of one of my projects – the theme of which was Reginald Perrin (fictitious character from a book and tv series) – I walked away from the college and was never seen again, mimicking Perrin's disappearance into the sea, during an episode of 'The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin'.

Since leaving Sheffield, I have lived in many cities in the UK, and worked in numerous jobs, from postman to a tractor driver on a farm. Whilst working full time,   have continued to engage in self-funded art projects, utilising a whole medley of media, including photography, performance, sculpture and music in order to bring my ideas to fruition. Some of my projects have seen me raffle myself (Win an Artist For a Day); attempt to sell my social identity; leave a giant sculpture in Oxford town centre; stage a guerilla-style exhibition in London job centres, and organise philosophical football chants at an Oxford United match.

Many of my recent projects have taken place in public spaces, where I leave objects behind for onlookers to engage with and question. The objects are often accompanied by a piece of written text, which is underpinned by the interplay of fact and fiction in order to blur the boundary between reality and make-believe, parodying, to some degree, the world of commercial advertising, the media and national governments, who continually blur the lines between what is real and what is fantasy. 

My work is rarely prescriptive, as I prefer to leave it to the observer to decide what level of truth / fabrication my work encompasses, and whether truth really matters, so long as what I create pricks people's bubbles – for a single moment at least.