Kestle Barton hosts the launch of Ray’s Sheds, a new publication by photographer Jem Southam, on Saturday 11 July. The afternoon will include drinks in the garden and a talk in the studio. Sarah Gillespie’s exhibition Birded and Eyed will also be on show in the gallery.
Ray’s Sheds brings together photographs, texts and design by Jem Southam in a new 120-page publication printed by Narayana Press in Denmark. The book contains around 50 plates made from 10×8 inch analogue negatives alongside contextual photographs and short texts.
The book documents the extraordinary studio sheds of sculptor Ray Exworth (1939–2015), where he worked in relative isolation from 1967 until his death. Across a series of densely packed spaces, Exworth made large and complex sculptural works from plaster, wood, metal, stone, wax, textiles, paper and found objects. Few people ever saw the work in situ and much of it is unlikely ever to leave the sheds. During his lifetime Exworth exhibited only rarely, including a solo exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1975 and later presentations at Royal Cornwall Museum, Truro. The sheds themselves became an extension of the works they contained: crowded, intricate spaces shaped over decades of sustained and intensely private activity.
Southam first visited Ray and Susie Exworth in 1983 to photograph the studios for a grant application, beginning a friendship that continued for more than thirty years. Following Ray’s death in 2015, Southam returned to the sheds with Susie Exworth’s support to make a more extensive photographic record of the work. Since 2011, Kestle Barton has presented a series of exhibitions and projects connected to Ray Exworth’s work, including A Shutter Came Down (2011), Ray’s Sheds: The Hidden Work of Ray Exworth (2016), and Naomi Frears’ Ray and Susie (2021). Jem Southam is one of Kestle Barton’s Associate Artists, and Ray’s Sheds continues a longstanding dialogue between artist, photographer and place, offering a remarkable insight into a rarely seen body of work.
Ray’s Sheds
Book launch event: Saturday 11 July, 2–5pm
Talk in the studio and drinks in the garden
Sarah Gillespie: Birded and Eyed exhibition on view in the gallery
Jem Southam : Ray’s Sheds
120 pages
275 × 323 mm
Softback Edition of 450
£45
Special edition with signed contact sheet: £125
Kestle Barton
Manaccan
Helston
Cornwall TR12 6HU
www.kestlebarton.co.uk
