Richard Dedomenici has a plan, but he’s uncertain if it’s going to work. We’re loitering at London’s Oxford Circus tube station within sight of the ubiquitous “Golf Sale” sign, which is pointing towards a store selling golfing paraphernalia and propped up by a bloke who’d rather be elsewhere. Dedomenici is carrying a small box marked “Golf Sale Here” that contains a dozen golf balls. He intends to position himself between the sign and the store in order to divert potential customers toward his own mini-sale, in an act of mild disobedience that is quickly becoming his trademark. “I’ve had to make this a not-for-profit exercise, just in case a policeman accuses me of illegal street trading. Ever since a teacher promised me a good mark for a performance piece if I got arrested, I’ve been pretty good at getting out of trouble by claiming that what I’m doing is art.”

This 26 year-old from Watford has won plaudits from the style press, round condemnation by the Conservative party, and a stint as the Edinburgh Fringe’s first ever artist-in-residence. His working methods rely on faith, perseverance, chutzpah and dashes of reckless stupidity, which has led to a disaster-strewn CV and, in turn, a lecture presentation entitled “Embracing Failure”. A charming character with bin-liners of enthusiasm, he found the ability to explain his way out of awkward situations at the very beginning of his artistic career. “For my first major commission I was given £300 to spend in any way I saw fit, as long as I came back the next day and explained to an audience what I’d done with it. Somehow I ended up losing about a third of the money, and had to own up by showing this crowd some photographs of how upset I was, as some kind of proof.” The success of the apology was a revelation to him, and his subsequent work has become almost scientific in its approach, featuring obsessive processes of documentation, and allowing endeavours that go badly wrong to become as valid and as important as any triumphs.

Dedomenici’s development has undoubtedly been helped by the British urge to cheer along those who, untainted by the pursuit of glory, launch themselves into foolhardy activities. An early stage performance where he attempted to dial numbers using a Casio keyboard pressed to the telephone receiver instead of using the touchtone keypad was pathetically futile, but each time the audience heard BT’s mantra-like phrase “Please replace the handset and try again”, they cheered him on enthusiastically. “I do get sympathy and amusement from audiences, along with an element of schadenfreude. But by embracing failure I take more risks, which in art is incredibly important. And the lecture itself has almost ended up becoming motivational – people have come up to me to say how inspired they were by it.” Lois Keidan at the Live Art Development Agency, who has commissioned the lecture on a number of occasions, explains its depth. “It’s not just a lecture, but also an incredibly clever way for Richard to archive and critique his own work. It’s typically ingenious, engaging and above all accessible to people who wouldn’t normally be interested in performance art.”

Dedomenici’s first artistic endeavours were uncharacteristically successful. At the age of 11 he won a competition to design a poster for the London Marathon, featuring the self-penned slogan “Get On Your Socks And Run Through The Docks”, which in retrospect he admits was grammatically dubious. “I probably won because I found out who was sponsoring the marathon that year, and just wrote the name of that company all round the outside of the poster,” he admits. During secondary school, his interest in corporate symbols developed with the work “Personal Trainer” where a Reebok shoe was unstitched, the separate pieces photocopied onto A4 paper, and then cut out and reassembled as a paper trainer. “I don’t think my graphic design teacher even realised it wasn’t a real trainer,” he recalls. “But these days my school invites me back to do works of art that I would have been expelled for at the time.” Outside lessons he produced stickers to be placed over London Underground maps to connect the lines differently and confuse tourists; this kicked off a long-lasting fascination with public transport and an ambition to become the official artist of Transport For London. An approach to their museum to sell copies of his work, “Genuine London Bus Lane”, (tiny fragments of red asphalt scooped from a London bus lane and presented in small plastic pouches) was dismissed on the grounds that it was “technically theft”, but even without their patronage, Dedomenici remains undaunted. “You know those enormous adverts on the back of buses? I’d love to arrange for one of those to feature a massive photograph of the front of a bus.” His 2002 piece, “Well Rounded Person”, involved riding for 43 continuous hours on the Circle Line during the Queen’s Golden Jubilee weekend. Armed with a portable urinal and £3.20 for his fare, he covered approximately 650 miles with only a short break at Liverpool Street when the female voice announcing the arrival at each station started to threaten his sanity. “Tube drivers call her Sonya, apparently,” he reveals, wincing slightly at the memory. “Because she, uh… gets sonya nerves.”

Dedomenici’s catalogue of work is both impressive in its size and consistently funny in its content. A recent commission for the Liverpool Biennale, “Corporate Stalker”, found him spending £300 on items such as magnetic knee supports, back correctors and folding canes from a Liverpool-based catalogue for the elderly, with the intention of dressing up in them and persistently visiting the company headquarters. Almost predictably he was thwarted when the items failed to be delivered. “I mocked up the outfit in Photoshop, and I would have looked like some fantastic, crazy cyborg. I think they must have just gone out of business.” But even without an attached disaster story, works such as “The Rosalind Project” (an attempt to turn coal into diamonds for the Wellcome Trust, which he describes as his “biggest professional failure”) or “HMS Belfast” (the training of the WW2 battleship’s gun turrets on his mother’s house) stand up on their own as beautiful acts of absurdity highlighting more serious issues. “Humour allows me to be vague about my targets,” he explains. “People do tend to switch off to overtly political messages.” Comparisons have been drawn with both Dave Gorman and Mark Thomas, but Anthony Roberts, the Director of Colchester Arts Centre who introduced Dedomenici to the Edinburgh Festival, feels that to label him a comedian is missing the point. “Richard’s lateral thinking and his ability to subvert can be utterly pointless but also completely captivating. He’s one of the most creative and prolific artists I’ve ever met.”

After a few minutes of standing on Regent Street, Dedomenici has sold no golf balls and the rain has started to lash down, causing the ink to run on his sign. He abandons the project for the day. “I don’t want to give the impression that everything I do goes catastrophically wrong. I’m planning a new lecture called “Some Of My Work Is Actually Very Successful”.” He looks at the sky for a moment. “But I don’t think it’ll resonate quite as much with people.”

Richard Dedomenici presents “Embracing Failure” at Battersea Arts Centre on 18th and 19th January. More details of his work and merchandise can be found at www.dedomenici.co.uk