Maya Hewitt
My work exists as a web of interlinking narratives. Painted on panels which are grouped together within a space, they form singular, large-scale installations. Fully encasing the walls of the space, each installation intends to create an immerse environment where multiple stories coexist on each picture plane.
The structural alterations of the gallery for each show become symptomatic of both my studio practice and the viewers experience of the work. The intension is to not only replicate the feeling of my studio environment within the gallery, but also, to deny the viewer the opportunity to fully step back from the painting, creating a claustrophobic space in which one cannot help but become a participant in the unfolding narrative surrounding them. Rather than being a backdrop, the work is invasive. The onlooker is intimately close, also exposing the physical process of painting: brush strokes, pencil graft rubbings, hairs trapped in paint. The 'illusion' of painting falls apart and is at once regained.
The work externalizes subtexts and events occurring beneath the surface of everyday human interactions. Evolved from a gap between childish fantasy and adult interpretation, fragments of memories and notions of power and desire are fought. The construction of unreal spaces and unworldly sites drawn from points of spectral encounter. Across these spaces there are multiple shifts in scale, between figures and objects, where constructs of intensive populated micro-landscapes, encoded narrative webs and sites underpinned by minute detail and plural mythologies exist. The painted figures appear and recur through shifting cycles as perpetual incarnations of themselves.
The work draws on a site of contemporary renovation in which considerations of chronology, history and artefact are dislocated, reconfigured and represented to form a new mythology. Narrative structures are created and influenced through my painting process itself, which involves the constant editing and scraping away of previously painted layers. The basic struggle of linear correctness combined with the content often gives rise to evolving narratives and hybrid scenarios.
Borrowing from fantasy to depict the un-articulated and unseen, the paintings increasingly occupy a site of collective representation of excess and ephemera that serving as signatories of a physical and actual world.
www.mayahewitt.com
The structural alterations of the gallery for each show become symptomatic of both my studio practice and the viewers experience of the work. The intension is to not only replicate the feeling of my studio environment within the gallery, but also, to deny the viewer the opportunity to fully step back from the painting, creating a claustrophobic space in which one cannot help but become a participant in the unfolding narrative surrounding them. Rather than being a backdrop, the work is invasive. The onlooker is intimately close, also exposing the physical process of painting: brush strokes, pencil graft rubbings, hairs trapped in paint. The 'illusion' of painting falls apart and is at once regained.
The work externalizes subtexts and events occurring beneath the surface of everyday human interactions. Evolved from a gap between childish fantasy and adult interpretation, fragments of memories and notions of power and desire are fought. The construction of unreal spaces and unworldly sites drawn from points of spectral encounter. Across these spaces there are multiple shifts in scale, between figures and objects, where constructs of intensive populated micro-landscapes, encoded narrative webs and sites underpinned by minute detail and plural mythologies exist. The painted figures appear and recur through shifting cycles as perpetual incarnations of themselves.
The work draws on a site of contemporary renovation in which considerations of chronology, history and artefact are dislocated, reconfigured and represented to form a new mythology. Narrative structures are created and influenced through my painting process itself, which involves the constant editing and scraping away of previously painted layers. The basic struggle of linear correctness combined with the content often gives rise to evolving narratives and hybrid scenarios.
Borrowing from fantasy to depict the un-articulated and unseen, the paintings increasingly occupy a site of collective representation of excess and ephemera that serving as signatories of a physical and actual world.
www.mayahewitt.com
My work exists as a web of interlinking narratives. Painted on panels which are grouped together within a space, they form singular, large-scale installations. Fully encasing the walls of the space, each installation intends to create an immerse environment where multiple stories coexist on each picture plane.
The structural alterations of the gallery for each show become symptomatic of both my studio practice and the viewers experience of the work. The intension is to not only replicate the feeling of my studio environment within the gallery, but also, to deny the viewer the opportunity to fully step back from the painting, creating a claustrophobic space in which one cannot help but become a participant in the unfolding narrative surrounding them. Rather than being a backdrop, the work is invasive. The onlooker is intimately close, also exposing the physical process of painting: brush strokes, pencil graft rubbings, hairs trapped in paint. The 'illusion' of painting falls apart and is at once regained.
The work externalizes subtexts and events occurring beneath the surface of everyday human interactions. Evolved from a gap between childish fantasy and adult interpretation, fragments of memories and notions of power and desire are fought. The construction of unreal spaces and unworldly sites drawn from points of spectral encounter. Across these spaces there are multiple shifts in scale, between figures and objects, where constructs of intensive populated micro-landscapes, encoded narrative webs and sites underpinned by minute detail and plural mythologies exist. The painted figures appear and recur through shifting cycles as perpetual incarnations of themselves.
The work draws on a site of contemporary renovation in which considerations of chronology, history and artefact are dislocated, reconfigured and represented to form a new mythology. Narrative structures are created and influenced through my painting process itself, which involves the constant editing and scraping away of previously painted layers. The basic struggle of linear correctness combined with the content often gives rise to evolving narratives and hybrid scenarios.
Borrowing from fantasy to depict the un-articulated and unseen, the paintings increasingly occupy a site of collective representation of excess and ephemera that serving as signatories of a physical and actual world.
www.mayahewitt.com
The structural alterations of the gallery for each show become symptomatic of both my studio practice and the viewers experience of the work. The intension is to not only replicate the feeling of my studio environment within the gallery, but also, to deny the viewer the opportunity to fully step back from the painting, creating a claustrophobic space in which one cannot help but become a participant in the unfolding narrative surrounding them. Rather than being a backdrop, the work is invasive. The onlooker is intimately close, also exposing the physical process of painting: brush strokes, pencil graft rubbings, hairs trapped in paint. The 'illusion' of painting falls apart and is at once regained.
The work externalizes subtexts and events occurring beneath the surface of everyday human interactions. Evolved from a gap between childish fantasy and adult interpretation, fragments of memories and notions of power and desire are fought. The construction of unreal spaces and unworldly sites drawn from points of spectral encounter. Across these spaces there are multiple shifts in scale, between figures and objects, where constructs of intensive populated micro-landscapes, encoded narrative webs and sites underpinned by minute detail and plural mythologies exist. The painted figures appear and recur through shifting cycles as perpetual incarnations of themselves.
The work draws on a site of contemporary renovation in which considerations of chronology, history and artefact are dislocated, reconfigured and represented to form a new mythology. Narrative structures are created and influenced through my painting process itself, which involves the constant editing and scraping away of previously painted layers. The basic struggle of linear correctness combined with the content often gives rise to evolving narratives and hybrid scenarios.
Borrowing from fantasy to depict the un-articulated and unseen, the paintings increasingly occupy a site of collective representation of excess and ephemera that serving as signatories of a physical and actual world.
www.mayahewitt.com
Lives and works in London, UK and Tokyo, Japan
Education
| 2004: | BA Hons Fine Art Painting, University of Brighton. Degree Show Awarded NUA (Nagoya School of Arts) Commendation |
| 2003: | Six months scholarship residency at Nagoya University of Art, Nagoya, Japan |
| 2000: | Camberwell College of Art, The London Institute (Fine Art Drawing) |
| 1999: | Winchester School of Art, Foundation |
Solo Exhibitions
| 2009: | Tokyo Art Fair, Misako & Rosen, Tokyo |
| 2008: | Our Immortal Souls, BISCHOFF/WEISS, London |
| 2007: |
Mending Fences, RUN project space, London Underbelly Skirmishes, Misako & Rosen, Tokyo (awarded with Daiwa Foundation Grant) |
| 2006: | The Janitors and their sheltered province, BISCHOFF/WEISS London |
Selected Group Exhibitions
| 2009: | Elusive Dreams, Group Show, IMOCA (Irish Museum of Contemporary Art), Dublin, Ireland Elusive Dreams, Group Show, La Cathedrale, Paris, France Art Brussels, BISCHOFF/WEISS, London Geba Geba, Misako & Rosen, Tokyo Parabiosis, Soka Art Center, Bejing and Taipei |
| 2008: |
NADA, Misako & Rosen, Miami Zoo Art Fair, BISCHOFF/WEISS, London |
| 2007: | From Tokyo From London, Maya Hewitt and Kazuyuki Takezaki, two person exhibition, Misako & Rosen, Tokyo Three Things, RUN project space, London Recent Works, Misako & Rosen, Tokyo |
| 2006: | George Polke Invites, London, UK Works on Paper, Flux Factory, New York, USA Discerning Eye, The Mall, London (nominated by Stuart Pearson-Wright) Preview Open, Misako & Rosen, Tokyo |
| 2005: |
Mondays in the Sun, FosterArt, London Summer Group Show, Marc Rome Gallery, Gstaad, Switzerland |
| 2004: | Soliloquy of Ours, R.K. Burt Gallery, London Remember the sky always comes down to the horizon, University of Brighton |
| 2003: |
On the Paper, Plus Gallery, Nagoya Room with a view, Grand Parade Gallery, Brighton |
Awards
| 2009: | Tokyo Wonder Site Award, Artist in Residence |
| 2008: | Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation, Small Grants |
Publications
| 2009: | Our Immortal Souls, Maya Hewitt, text by Charles Danby Cella London, ISBN 987-0-9556293-6-5 |
