What happens when one of Britain’s most famous showmen decides to drop the act? That’s the question Robbie Williams is asking (and answering) with Radical Honesty, his latest exhibition at the Moco Museum in London.
Williams has spent over three decades in the public eye, first as the youngest member of Take That and then as one of the UK’s most successful solo artists. He has no fewer than fifteen number-one albums, with singles like Angels and Feel becoming part of British pop history.
Alongside that career, he has been painting and sketching for years, starting in the late 1990s as a daily practice while touring. What began as a private outlet has now become a major part of his creative output.
From music to canvas
Robbie Williams’ visual art runs in parallel to his music. The same themes that have shaped his songwriting – self-awareness, humour brushing against anxiety, private thoughts pushed into public view – run through Radical Honesty as well.
The work connects back to the period when he was producing some of his most confessional tracks. The marble head carved to embody anxiety carries the same weight as Come Undone. The oversized knit stitched with conflicting emotions could sit behind Feel. He’s simply swapping melody for colour, lyric for canvas, and performance for pieces.
What to expect
One of the standouts is a heavy marble head shaped to carry the word anxiety as a physical weight. There’s also the “Emotion Sweater,” a monumental knitted piece that stretches across another room, stitched with words like “Anxious,” “Empathetic,” “Paranoid” and “Brave.”
Nearby, a single wooden chair sits against a blank wall under a sign reading “uninterrupted introversion.” The gallery leaves the space around it empty, framing whoever sits there in their own moment of solitude.
The paintings carry Williams’ boldness most clearly. Each canvas carries a single line of text – “Yes, I didn’t want to come and now I don’t want to be here” in black block capitals; “Yes you are self-centred, but what a marvellous self to get centred on” across a flat blue sky.
There’s a deadpan tone running through them, equal parts wry and vulnerable, and it threads consistently across every piece in the show.
Radical Honesty around Europe
This exhibition is the third chapter of Williams’ collaboration with Moco after Amsterdam and Barcelona, and the first time London audiences see his sculptures alongside the paintings. It is exactly what the title suggests: unpolished, raw, and jarring at times.
Radical Honesty feels closer to a conversation than a gallery show. There are jokes, awkward truths, flashes of tenderness and moments that land with the same emotional weight as his best lyrics.
The work doesn’t try to separate the man from the myth – it lets both sit in the same room and spill their thoughts onto canvas and stone.
Visiting Radical Honesty
Radical Honesty is open now at Moco Museum London, 1 Marble Arch, with limited spaces available. Tickets start from £20, with concessions for students and under-18s, and give you access to the entire museum. Aside from Radical Honesty, you can also see more than 100 artworks by over 35 artists like Banksy, Basquiat, Warhol, Haring, Kusama, Hirst, Digital Art, and more.