Since 1991, British artist Vicki Bennett has been working under the name People Like Us, creating audio-visual collage across music, film, radio, live performance and immersive installations. Drawing on the vast archive of popular culture, she repurposes familiar sounds and images to create unexpected connections, often with a dark sense of humour and an interest in the absurd. Through the process of collage, fragments are removed from their original contexts and brought into new relationships, producing meanings that are more than the sum of their parts.
Vicki sees collage as a form of contemporary folk art, drawing on the shared palette of media and technology, with all the borrowing, sharing and cross-referencing that implies. Central to her practice is the premise that everything is interconnected, and that claiming ownership of an entirely “original” or isolated idea is both preposterous and redundant. Sampling is not simply a compositional technique but a way of thinking about how meaning emerges through association, juxtaposition and the rearrangement of what already exists.
Her work ranges from the long-running DO or DIY radio programme on WFMU and large-scale experimental broadcasts such as Radio Boredcast, to the immersive cinema installation Gone, Gone Beyond and the live audiovisual performance The Library of Babel. In 2006, she became the first artist granted unrestricted access to the BBC archives, having previously recorded a session for John Peel in 2003. People Like Us has presented work internationally at venues, galleries and festivals including Barbican, Whitechapel Gallery, MACBA (Barcelona), MAXXI (Rome), Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin), Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center (Buffalo), HMKV (Dortmund), Sheehan Gallery (Walla Walla), Gray Area (San Francisco), Venice Biennale, Sónar, transmediale, Café OTO, Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts and donaufestival (Austria).
Longer Biography
Filmography
Exhibitions and Editions
Selected Performances and Screenings
Commissions and Awards
People Like Us on bandcamp
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Discography
