ArtSway has announced an exhibition of new work by Dave Lewis. Field Work will be exhibited 6 February – 28 March 2010.
Dave Lewis is a photographer and film maker who is interested in the role of the individual within society, and the impact that individual can have on a place, and the inhabitants of a place.
Dave Lewis, “New Forest” – image from Field Work, 2009
Lewis’ new body of work, called Field Work, is inspired by the idea of the artist as a mythical ‘Stranger’ who ventures into a place, or site, exploring what the artist describes as ‘an unknown site’, and gathering first-hand information as ethnographic research. The sites that Lewis explored – the New Forest in Hampshire and Newtown and its environs in Wales – are linked by their respective rural locales. By analysing and contrasting these areas, interviewing residents and documenting events such as local festivals and carnivals, Lewis attempts to evaluate ideas around belonging, identity and migration viewed by the stranger as an impartial observer.
For his exhibition at ArtSway Lewis will present a series of film-based ‘Journeys’ – containing footage of his research into the New Forest and Newtown. These films will feature the ‘Stranger’ (or outsider, played by Lewis) – a enigmatic figure who appears within the landscape and towns of Wales and the New Forest as a metaphor for the unease felt in arriving in a new place. The exhibition will also include several large-scale landscape photographs – intended to ‘set the scene’ for the viewer, and to suggest a sense of the ‘outsider’ on the edges of a place they have no experience of.
Other images in the exhibition will include photographs Lewis took at carnivals in Wales and the New Forest that further explore ideas of identity and belonging to a place.
Dave Lewis gained a BA Hons in Film and Photographic Arts from the Polytechnic of Central London in 1985. Recent exhibitions and screenings include: Photo-ID Norwich Forum, 2009; Hybridity, Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts 2008; Anywhere but Here, Southwark Gallery, 2008; AfterShock, Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, 2007. Dave Lewis lives and works in London and is currently Visiting Research Fellow in the Department of Anthropology, Goldsmiths, University of London.
Dave Lewis: Field Work is a co-commission by Autograph ABP, ArtSway, and Oriel Davies Gallery. Field Work will be exhibited at Oriel Davies Gallery from 17 April – 9 June 2010.
ArtSway Station Road Sway, Hampshire (England) SO41 6BA
www.artsway.org.uk
