Jem Southam Photographs – Ray’s Sheds: The Hidden Work of Ray Exworth
10 September - 29 October 2016
Opening: Saturday 10 September 2–5pm 3pm Talking about Ray Exworth with Jem Southam and Tim Shaw
‘…so he bought a cottage in remote West Cornwall and built a large wooden shed and moved all his existing work into it – no question of doing any work on the cottage until the shed was completed. This became a very private place, his own sanctuary, and to allow anyone to enter would be to give them access to a very private and personal part of his mind which he did not feel inclined to share with anyone. For some years even I was not allowed in and he told visiting friends that this strange large building was a neighbouring farmer’s barn.’ – Susie Exworth, 2016
Born in Ipswich in 1930, Ray Exworth studied at the Royal College of Art from 1955 to 1959. Twice awarded the Arts Council Major Award, he has lectured at the Royal College of Art, Royal Academy Sculpture School and Falmouth School of Art. For over forty years he lived and worked in relative seclusion at his home in Cornwall.
In 2011 Kestle Barton made a landmark exhibition documenting the work of Ray Exworth, one of Cornwall’s most reclusive but exciting sculptors and including some large scale photographs of his work by Jem Southam. In 2015 Ray Exworth died, leaving behind his wife, Susie, and the Wroxham Trust to oversee the legacy of his estate; including The Circus, still unseen.
Jem Southam, currently Professor of Photography at Plymouth University, a very fine and widely collected photographer and close friend of Ray and Susie, visited regularly during the 1980s and in so doing was able to make a remarkable series of photographs of Ray’s work. Now Jem Southam has returned to Ray’s sheds with his camera, his memories of Ray, and a renewed desire to document and share this lifetime’s work.
