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Maya Hewitt: All Along the Shadows

Exhibition details

Opening / Event Date:
30 October, 2014
Time:
6:30 pm - 8:30 pm
Closing / End Date:
22 November, 2014
Event Category:

Exhibition dates: Thursday 30 October – Friday 22 November 2014

10 Chancery Lane Gallery is proud to present for the second time in Hong Kong, young British artist, Maya Hewitt.

Maya Hewitt is a talented figurative painter whose exotic narrative landscapes form an artificial space, constructed and staged in a state of suspension.  They travel between the real and the fictional, between human and supernatural energies, and between artifice and nature. There is always a relationship or drama at play amongst a sense of belonging.

The figures inhabiting the space of Hewitt’s paintings embody elements of the human condition, heartfelt and complex. They remain quiet and introverted, absorbed in their own thoughts, and perhaps lost in their own world. Hewitt explains, “I don’t plan out my paintings beforehand, I like to build up and construct a space and follow a narrative that evolves as I paint, as a way of finding my path within the works. I want to create a feeling of worlds within worlds in my paintings, where you can believe that you have the power inside of yourself to escape there.”

This new series of works were inspired by the Jura Mountains where she spent much of her childhood. Although not directly referencing imagery from the Jura, the initial intention was to construct spaces reminiscent of that feeling, where everything is flanked by woods, where nature is the dominant force. The settings appear not quite fully outside (in nature) or within interiors but rather, the figures seemed to have journeyed or awakened in a frontier that is almost a stage-bound, man-made environment or a zoo-like enclosure. Though they reference landscape and narrative, they are not of any one environment.

As in her earlier series, Hewitt explores pockets of details and narratives, which play out, where the exotic and uncanny sit along side figures who appear unawares, absorbed in their own thoughts, doing mundane day-to-day activities. Personal symbolic objects draw references from across time and cultures and myths. Having studied painting in Japan, Hewitt’s earlier works were heavily influenced by Japanese animé painting. She has ventured away from this aspect of her previous works and we see a deeper and richer palette yet she continues to reference the bizarre in her choice of beings and symbols.  Her works, more cryptic now, the emotions seem more shielded, with an ambiguity that still represents psychological states of being.

Hewitt, presently based in London, has participated in numerous exhibitions internationally including, most recently The Forgiven Ghost in Me at Misako & Rosen in Tokyo (2014), Passion Fruits, Thomas Olbricht collection, Berlin (2010), Nocturne, Bischoff Weiss Gallery, London (2010) and Elusive Dreams which travelled from La Cathedrale, Paris to the Irish Museum of Contemporary Art (2009). Hewitt studied at the University of Brighton, Camberwell College of Art, Winchester School of Art as well as  the Nagoya University of Art in Japan and was a participant in residencies under the auspices of both Tokyo Wonder Site and the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation. In 2010, Hewitt collaborated with noted Tokyo-based jewelry designer Yoshiyo Abbe (Petite Robe Noire) on the exhibition Stones in Paws.

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