Hidden within a few unassuming Cornish farm sheds, a world of all-immersing art sits in wait ready to engulf those lucky enough to enter. Over the course of several decades the late artist Ray Exworth dedicated every spare moment to building bizarre and brilliant assemblages that expand far beyond any simple definition of ‘sculpture’ or ‘installation’. Using all possible materials at his disposal – be they nails, wood offcuts, bodily plaster casts, discarded signage or enormous metal doors – he set about gluing, nailing, drilling and painting to produce his own unique forms of Gesamtkunstwerk.
Invariably working in solitude, the artist rarely invited guests into his private realm (which can be more accurately described as a collection of sheds, barns, studios and workshops). He preferred instead to surround himself with materials so dense that it was practically impossible to move around. Photographer Jem Southam, who first befriended Exworth and his wife, Susie, in the early 1980s, captured a few images during his first tour, but it was only after the artist’s death that he returned to individually document the seven spaces (each with a unique identity) with both a digital and a large-plate camera. ‘On my first visit he wanted a few pictures for a grant application,’ says Southam. ‘I took 12 in total, and although I visited many times and we became good friends, he never again in his lifetime let me inside the sheds with a camera.’
There was never any clear purpose to Exworth’s ongoing endeavour, beyond the pure joy of creation. That being said, he was far from an outsider in the art world. He studied at the Royal College of Art and exhibited at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1975, having successfully established a new sculpture department at Falmouth School of Art, where he made work alongside his students.
In 1976, he set about his most ambitious project, known as ‘The Circus’, which he worked on six days a week over the course of ten years. Originally inspired by Piccadilly Underground station and the passage of life from light to dark, it became a whirling mass of cascading, interconnected and interlinked objects that fills what is best described as a barn, and which spread into other sheds, too. Southam recalls that staff from Manchester’s (now sadly defunct) Cornerhouse gallery got wind of the project, and proposed building a gigantic circus tent to house the artwork in its entirety. ‘It was a wonderful idea,’ says Southam, ‘but when they visited the practicalities of deconstructing and then reassembling everything proved impossible.’
Despite this setback, Ray Exworth had better luck when the Arts Council came calling. A report from a member of the purchasing committee describes the sheds as ‘a mass of plaster, wood, papier-mâché, wire and goodness knows what else, modelled, carved and partly assembled to fill, like the visitors, every available cranny.’ Flummoxed as to what was actually feasible for purchase, they settled on several wooden boxes filled with tableaux, thus functioning as microcosms of the much larger, unwieldy sheds.
Exworth’s constructions were certainly not without peril. His circuitous modes of production meant that pieces easily defined as artistic constructions were surrounded by many other forms of detritus ready for their moment in the sun, be it flotsam and jetsam from a nearby beach, tins of paint, boxes of pins or piles of magazines. Health and safety was certainly not top of the agenda, and one incident involved a heavy mannequin known as ‘the doll’ falling on top of the artist, whereupon he remained pinned to the floor for several hours, before Susie came to the rescue.
Taking in these photographs, it is almost unfathomable that one man could create on such a scale, and hold so many disparate parts in his mind. It is regrettable too, that one day these constructions might disappear, and Southam’s book will thus serve as a vital record of an artist’s hidden legacy. It has certainly been a labour of love for the photographer, whose ultimate aim was to capture something of Exworth’s creative spirit. As he explains: ‘His sculptural imagination, the variety of materials that he used, and the skill level that he showed, is nothing short of astonishing.’
‘Ray’s Sheds’ by Jem Southam is published by Raft and available via RRB Photobooks. For more information visit rrbphotobooks.com
