• BIOGRAPHY

Robert Pacitti (1967) was born in London, raised in Kent and then Suffolk. Starting out as a fine art painter, he took an arts foundation course in Salford, followed by an arts degree in Brighton. In the late 1980s, he began experimenting with live performance and across the next 30 years created a body of work influenced by counterculture, sexual politics, and social activism.

With Pacitti Company he presented work at sites including: Arnolfini (Bristol), Arsenic (Lausanne), Arts House (Melbourne), Barbican (London), CCA (Glasgow), Ex-Teresa (Mexico City), FFT (Düsseldorf), Hebbel (Berlin), ICA (London), Klapstuk (Leuven), Palais des Beaux-Arts (Brussels), Performance Space (Sydney), PICA (Perth), PS122 (New York), Royal Court Theatre (London), SESC Copacabana (Rio de Janeiro), Southbank (London), and Tafelhalle (Nuremberg), among many others.

Robert also toured internationally as a guest deviser and performer for other companies, including the Edward Lam Company, Featherstonehaughs, Gay Sweatshop, and the Handsome Foundation. He taught and lectured widely at colleges across the UK and worked internationally as a workshop facilitator, mentor and key note speaker.

In 2007, Robert created the SPILL Festival of Performance - an artist-led tactic to present and contextualise types of live performance and experimental practices which then struggled for visibility in the UK. Over the next 15 years he created 10 large SPILL Festivals, featuring work by some of the world's leading experimental artists, alongside that of earlier makers. ​In 2010, Robert relocated SPILL and Pacitti Company from London to Ipswich, where in 2012 he opened the Think Tank - a specially renovated building based resource for applied arts research, diverse rolling events and community action.

Awards include: three-year regular funding (Arts Council England, 2001-2022), Ambition For Excellence (ACE 2018-2021), Best Marketing Award for SPILL Festival (Norfolk & Suffolk Tourism Awards 2018), Hospital Club 100 (2013), and Artists Taking The Lead (ACE, London 2012).

During the 2020 lockdown, Robert reflected on what felt important in life and where to direct energy going forward. In 2021, after three decades of near constant delivery, he folded Pacitti Company, passed on SPILL as a stand alone entity, and merrily walked away.