Maya Hewitt - Our Immortal Souls
19 Sep - 1 Nov 2008
BISCHOFF/WEISS is pleased to present Our Immortal Souls, an exhibition of new installation work and paintings by Maya Hewitt.
Having worked in the gallery for six weeks, Hewitt has constructed a series of rooms through which the viewer is invited into her personal fiction. Strewn with objects and interacting figures, the triptych panels explore a space within her nostalgic environment, where painted objects are influenced by the historical narratives of museum pieces. Drawn from the artist's family home Hewitt turns these banal objects into artefacts that are re-invented in paint and re-contextualised by the viewer. The objects function as the backdrop for an unrealized theatrical performance, despite their personalised history.
In the centre of the gallery the artist has created a dark, cluttered workspace emphasising the blurred line between painted fiction and reality through physical objects and enhanced by muffled music.
The narrative structures are created through the constant editing and scraping away of previously painted layers. Anthropomorphic figures emerge like sentinels and interact with the objects. Recognizable by their uniform and distinctively rendered styling, Hewitt has recycled these proletariat figures from past works. Like many religious systems, Hewitt's environment relies upon the notion of the psychopomp (a Greek "guider of souls" who escorts dead spirits safely without judgment) to mediate between the planes of fiction and reality.
Hewitt's works seek to excavate the subtexts which occur beneath the surface of everyday human interactions. Through the use of painted artefacts and reoccurring figures, the artist creates a personal mythology, allowing the viewer to interact with the multilayered narratives found in her work.
Maya Hewitt, born in 1981, received her BA at the University of Brighton in 2004. In 2003 she received a scholarship for study at Nagoya University of Art for six months. Solo shows include Mending Fences, RUN project space, London (2007), Underbelly Skirmishes, Misako & Rosen, Tokyo (2007), and The Janitors and Their Sheltered Province, BISCHOFF/WEISS, London (2006). Group shows include New Tokyo Contemporaries, Tokyo (2008), Volta4, Basel (2008), From Tokyo From London, Maya Hewitt and Kazuyuki Takezaki (2007), Two person exhibition, Misako & Rosen, Tokyo (2007), Three Things, RUN project space, London (2007) and Recent Works, Misako & Rosen, Tokyo (2007).
Having worked in the gallery for six weeks, Hewitt has constructed a series of rooms through which the viewer is invited into her personal fiction. Strewn with objects and interacting figures, the triptych panels explore a space within her nostalgic environment, where painted objects are influenced by the historical narratives of museum pieces. Drawn from the artist's family home Hewitt turns these banal objects into artefacts that are re-invented in paint and re-contextualised by the viewer. The objects function as the backdrop for an unrealized theatrical performance, despite their personalised history.
In the centre of the gallery the artist has created a dark, cluttered workspace emphasising the blurred line between painted fiction and reality through physical objects and enhanced by muffled music.
The narrative structures are created through the constant editing and scraping away of previously painted layers. Anthropomorphic figures emerge like sentinels and interact with the objects. Recognizable by their uniform and distinctively rendered styling, Hewitt has recycled these proletariat figures from past works. Like many religious systems, Hewitt's environment relies upon the notion of the psychopomp (a Greek "guider of souls" who escorts dead spirits safely without judgment) to mediate between the planes of fiction and reality.
Hewitt's works seek to excavate the subtexts which occur beneath the surface of everyday human interactions. Through the use of painted artefacts and reoccurring figures, the artist creates a personal mythology, allowing the viewer to interact with the multilayered narratives found in her work.
Maya Hewitt, born in 1981, received her BA at the University of Brighton in 2004. In 2003 she received a scholarship for study at Nagoya University of Art for six months. Solo shows include Mending Fences, RUN project space, London (2007), Underbelly Skirmishes, Misako & Rosen, Tokyo (2007), and The Janitors and Their Sheltered Province, BISCHOFF/WEISS, London (2006). Group shows include New Tokyo Contemporaries, Tokyo (2008), Volta4, Basel (2008), From Tokyo From London, Maya Hewitt and Kazuyuki Takezaki (2007), Two person exhibition, Misako & Rosen, Tokyo (2007), Three Things, RUN project space, London (2007) and Recent Works, Misako & Rosen, Tokyo (2007).