Sam Machell is an artist, writer and game developer. His multi-disciplinary practice networks drawings, texts, performances and videos to bring to life absurd fictions. He is interested in vast, complex ecologies and power structures, and the emotional/bodily experience of existing within them. He tends towards melancholy, allegorising existential frailty and confusion whilst making space for improbable compassion and play.
Sam’s stories and writing often situate neurotic, naive characters within contrived, doomed situations that resist cohesion, drawing on the legacy of ‘hysterical realism’ and the ‘systems novel’. He favours unwieldy purple prose with a focus on sonics and flow. His short fiction has been published by Expat Press, surfaces.cx and Back Patio Press. He has performed poetry at The Language Club in Plymouth. His first non-fiction collection, Offal Opacities, was published by Cloak.
With Colin le Duc as the Sand Gardeners, Sam’s game work explores the politics of player agency, hauntology, hypermodernism and glitch. Their award-nominated games have exhibited internationally and featured in publications such as PC Gamer, Rock Paper Shotgun and Kotaku.
Education
BA Fine Art, Plymouth College of Art, 2020
MA Contemporary Arts Practice, University of Plymouth, 2023
Selected Exhibitions
Coherent Philosophy (end of residency sharing), FENSTER Project Space @ KARST, Plymouth, UK, 2025
The Bird and the Rhino (group), Harbour House, Kingsbridge, UK, 2025
Redux of Decor (group), Contemporary Artefacts, online, 2023
In Spite of Bad Weather (MA graduate exhibition), The Levinsky Gallery, Plymouth, UK, 2023
Dinner Machine: Behind the Scenes (solo), First Thursdays at Minerva, Plymouth, UK, 2023
Dinner Machine: The Tale of the Tattoo’d Pig (solo), Cornwall Street Project Space, Plymouth, UK, 2023
Waypoint (MA midstream exhibition), University of Plymouth, UK, 2022
The Internet Yami-Ichi Madrid (group), Tentacular, Matadero, Madrid, Spain, 2018
Selected Exhibitions as Sand Gardeners
Beetle Mixtape #1 (group), Cabbagetown Art Centre, Atlanta, USA, 2024
Plymouth Art Weekender (group), online, 2022
NZ Games Festival (group), Wellington, NZ, 2020
Notopia (group, co-curator), Leadworks, Plymouth, UK, 2019
Feral Vector (group), Hebden Bridge, UK, 2019
The Leftfield Collection, EGX Rezzed (group), London, UK, 2019
Ludicious (group), Zurich Game Festival, Zurich, Switzerland, 2018
The Leftfield Collection, EGX (group), Birmingham, UK & Berlin, Germany, 2018
Swedish Games Conference (group), Skövde, Sweden, 2018
Selected Performances/Lectures
Without End, 12 Bar, Exeter, UK, 2025
The Language Club, Plymouth, UK, 2024
‘Dinner Machine Cross Section: Rat Trap’, Storytelling: Shared Narratives of Research and Practice, University of Plymouth, UK, 2022
‘Putting Your Game on Itch and Other Misdemeanours’, ELEVATE Lambeth, online, 2021
‘Help! Help! Everything is Collaapsing! Videogames as Collage’, AdventureX, British Library, UK, 2019