Main Gallery

Simon Lewty/Will Maclean

Charting a Decade II, 2006 – 2016

12 April – 21 May 2016

Simon Lewty/Will Maclean installation image Simon Lewty, List: Rhyme-Rivulet, 2015, pencil on gesso on tissue paper, 33 x 39 cm Will Maclean, Theatre of Memory, 2015 (for Peter Davidson), Found objects and collage on board, 20 x 15 x 3 cm

Exhibition Catalogue

Press Release

Art First has great pleasure in presenting this exhibition of a dialogue between Simon Lewty and Will Maclean, charting the second decade of an arrangement in which tacit agreements and mutual respect have co-existed harmoniously, creatively, privately. It is time to celebrate.

There are many points of contact between Maclean and Lewty. The beginnings of a list might include that both have engaged deeply with the coast and the sea (in Lewty’s case in the parts of his life spent in Swanage, Dorset), both have an interest in metaphysics, both are serious readers, both have remained true to their sensibilities over decades, sustaining an intense focus on their subject matter in whatever varied scales and mediums they have worked, neither has been swayed by fashion or the marketplace, each maintains a consistent inner voice… and the list could go on for some while, yet their characters and their art, and the texture of their lives embody great contrasts. They do not often meet but they have exchanged works and they regard one another highly. The nexus for them is Art First.