With Radical Honesty, Robbie Williams is making an exhibition of himself

In the glitzy galleries of Moco Museum London, a shiny new space by the traffic-clogged vortex-cum-roundabout of Marble Arch, the singer-songwriter-provocateur Robbie Williams has splurged his innermost thoughts and outermost scribbles. Radical Honesty is the first major showing of the pop star’s “art” (Robbie would be OK with the quote marks).

They’re rendered via iPad drawings, wall scrawls, wonky spelling and wayward punctuation, giant executive toys, greetings-card aphorisms on Athena-size posters, and outsized comfort knitwear (bear with us here). All that and an actual tombstone, placed on astroturf on the floor, for the artist formerly known as the most rewarded musician in the history of the BRIT Awards. The epitaph of Robert Peter Williams, age 51, of Stoke-on-Trent? “I’m dead now please like and subscribe”.

The results aren’t always pretty. Robbie Williams would be OK with that, too. “Before party practising conversation topics that wont sound insane,” run the runes on one wriggly Shrigley self-portrait of this sober anti-socialite as he gazes into the bathroom mirror. “‘Smelt anything cool lately?’”

“I forgive you for being a Dickhead. You twat,” begins another reflected image of a tatted and vested Robbie. “OK, we still need to work on this.” These convos-with-self are the outward manifestations of the inner turmoil of a father of four with the mother of all neuroses. “Violets are blue, roses are red, lock the pill cabinet or I’ll steal your meds,” this once-and-forever addict writes under a thirsty Hirst-y medicine cabinet.

“Just because you’re dyslexic doesnt mean youre not stupid,” he’s felt-penned onto a mixtape. “Give your anxiety a silly name. Mine is called Blanche,” he writes over a black and white doodle of a wild-haired granny. “This is Blanche.”

As he revealed in 2023’s wars’n’warts’n’all Netflix documentary series Robbie Williams, this gazillion-selling pop star and hero to a generation (or two) wrestles with “dyspraxia, dyslexia, ADHD, neurodiversity, body dysmorphia, hypervigilance… There’s a new one that I acquired recently: HSP. Highly sensitive person. Post-traumatic stress disorder. And, obviously, I have an addictive personality.”

Hence Radical Honesty’s Emotion Sweater, capacious enough even for the head of the world-wobbling talent with a 1999 album called the The Ego Has Landed. It’s an artwork in which he wears his superpowers embroidered on its sleeve and chest: “Anxious”; “Narcissistic”; “Paranoid”; “Resilient”; “Proud”; “Shame”. You get the turmoiled picture.

Another piece of clobber is an equally XXXXL hoodie. “Robbie Williams sews his story into Prescribed Identity Hoodie,” explains the accompanying descriptor, “an oversized statement on addiction and self-medication. Typically tucked away in secrecy, these addictions can expose the ingredients to a carefully tailored persona, a means of self-soothing, self-medicating, and, at times, self-preserving, with multiple pockets, each bearing the name of a prescription drug.” Ozempic, Ambien and Xnax, oh my!

And so on. Radical Honesty—hanging (out) at Moco until October—is, like last year’s marvellous monkey-biz biopic Better Man, both larky nonsense and poignantly powerful. For the man himself, staring down the barrel of a stadium tour (another one) that takes him all round Europe from this month until deep into autumn, the art’s function is clear. Better out than in.

“First of all,” I say to Robbie when we sit down together in a room in Moco’s basement, shortly before doors open on Radical Honesty’s Private View, “tell me about your balls.”

“Which ones?” says the taking-the-piss-artist, clear-eyed and gym-fit, perking up immediately.

I tell him I mean the giant clacking steel spheres in the gallery upstairs.

“Oh, yeah! I’m really happy with them. Because [it means] I’ve got a sculpture,” he says proudly, leaning forward and toying with the iPad that contains many of his (literally) daily drawings. “Is that a sculpture. Is that what it is?”

I think we can agree it’s a sculpture.

“It’s a hefty thing. It’s heavy. It came out of my brain. And if I do say so myself, I think the idea is quite smart. There’s them and there’s us, isn’t there? And look, we’re just in the middle, at the end of the day. Two sides of the same coin, et cetera, et cetera. But smarter than that.”

What is Radical Honesty?

Radical Honesty is a series of drawings that I’ve done. When it’s out there, it looks as though I’m saying: “I’m radically honest, and so should you be.” I’m actually taking the piss. The Radical Honesty series of drawings that I’ve done are things that I think in my head that I would never say out loud. So my radical honesty isn’t that radical. Isn’t that radically honest?

Did you always have these visual art impulses?

This is a late blooming thing. From when I used to live in Notting Hill and I went to the art supply store and just bought shitloads of everything, and thought I was going to do collage, and then I did, and it was shit. But it went up in the Tate! It’s not my fault. It did go up in the Tate, the very first thing that I made, obviously, ’cause I’m Robbie Williams. And Peter Blake owns it.

Did you get some cash for that?

No, no, no, no, no. I bought something from him, and he gave me the W.C. Fields [cardboard cut-out] from the Sgt. Pepper album cover. So it’s not even a fair swap. Anyway, this has been a process, probably since before 2006. And here I am now trying to be witty. Or at least doing things that make me titter.

Finally having them out in the in the world, after all these years of secretly doing “art”, does that speak of confidence, boredom, a mixture of both, something else…?

I think it speaks of there being [lots of ideas]. I’ve got 3000 of these ideas, and they just keep coming every day. There’s a proper backlog of them. And I suppose [it speaks of] feeling brave enough to show people, and thinking maybe they should exist in other places, other than on my iPad or in my garage.

How serious do you want people to take it?

Dude, I’m Robbie Williams. I’ve been in the [music] industry since I was 16. They’re not going to start taking me seriously now. I just want them to buy it! I gave up on wanting to be taken seriously…. last week! [No,] a while ago, let’s put it that way.

You recently said “I hope my stuff is ridiculous”. Presumably you yourself don’t want to be ridiculous, but you don’t mind the art being seen that way?

I think I want to…. You know, all of my heroes, I suppose, are comedic more than musical. My dad was and is a comedian. And I would like to generate a titter in somebody’s mind. If I can make them actually verbalise that titter, then that’s a victory. So I suppose this is my version of stand-up comedy.

Who are your art heroes or inspirations?

All of the traditional pop art people. There’s nobody off the beaten track that I know. I’m not a student of the game, as Roy Keane would mockingly say. There is no art history degree. I don’t know all of their names. I don’t know if I’d recognise a Magritte from a Renoir. I’m not that person. Much like when I left Take That and I was asked about my musical credentials. I don’t know Buffalo Springsteen’s album [sic] [and wink]. I didn’t listen to it! [My attitude was:] “I just like fucking music, fuck off!” I like images.

What do your kids make of your art?

They are intrigued by it. They want to make their own.

Is your eldest Teddy, going: “Mate, I could do better than that?”

Yeah, she is, and she will. And my son [Charlie, 10] is drawing his own and trying to come up with his own jokes too. But his own jokes normally revolve around him coming up to me and going: “Daddy, is it OK if I swear?” And me going: “Yeah, OK.” And then him misspelling “narcissist” over a drawing of me.

That sounds like a great piece, we need to get that up in a gallery.

It is! I’ve got it somewhere.

Is that Radical Honesty 2: Robbie’s Kids Speak?

Yeah, it’s how they see me.

The Prescribed Identity Hoodie: can you unpack, unpick or, even, unravel that for me?

Can you? Yeah, no, I can’t really. I’m actually doing a line of clothing, and it was going to be a hoodie. And I thought: “Wouldn’t it be funny if all the pockets were advertising antidepressants or anxiety medication?” That’s it. That is it. If you want to delve further into that, then please do. But for me, it was just: “Wouldn’t it be funny if…”

… if all your drugs were available on your body at the same time?

Yeah! Legal drugs these days, of course, kids.

Is there a crossover with your merchandise for your imminent tour?

Yes! Yes, which we need to do… [Robbie looks questioningly at his management perched nearby] So can we get a move on?

Imagery allied with music also still matters to you, it seems…

More than ever now. But you have to understand that a lot of my early education informed my later life, too. I was a pop person in a pop band that just got in the car and turned up. I took that into my solo career, too. I didn’t realise you could make your own album covers, as stupid as that sounds. I didn’t realise you could make your own merchandise. I didn’t realise that you’d want to. So I’m still learning.

But to be fair, pop bands–especially boy bands–didn’t have that agency. Certainly in the Nineties, they generally weren’t given the power by labels to have a visual input. It was just: crank out the tunes, crank out the gigs – and we’ll cream off the cash.

Yeah, but I also think that [musicians] didn’t know they could or should. You just turned up with the tunes, and that’s your bit done. Then everybody else does everything else. Unless you want to. And I want to, now.

Radical Honesty, Moco Museum London. Tickets here. Robbie’s tour stars in Edinburgh on 31^st May. 

Main image: Marc Roses