DAVID STEWART
FEATHERSTONE STREET
22nd October - 3rd December 2021

Due to the demolition of the building opposite his studio at the end of 2019, Stewart was inspired by the space becoming flooded by natural daylight. This occurrence temporarily transformed how he was able to work in the space. Using only the natural light and a large format camera shooting on 8x10 film, he started to photograph formally posed portraits of some of the people who had been involved in his work in a number of different ways over the past five decades. At no point does Stewart reveal his relationship to each portrait, it is left to the viewer to make up their own stories. By not revealing who the sitters are, but symbolically flagging their importance by photographing them so formally, Stewart elevates them to a near celebrity status. Creating work in a more traditional way is fast being overlooked, and ultimately lost, in favour of using digital methods. These large format portraits can be considered as a comment on the ubiquity of photography heralded by the rise of social media and the notion of the “universal photographer”.

DAVID STEWART
GEOFFREY VALENTINE
14th February - 9th April 2020

Death within art is one of the most pervasive topics throughout art history. However, the physicality of the moment itself, alongside the representation of the remaining corpse, has ultimately been rejected in favour of a more romanticised representation of the afterlife. In a culture where everything is recorded and shared pictorially, death is one of the only subjects that remains private. Stewart’s unwavering almost clinical documentation of his father therefore comes as a jolt as it is one that is generally hidden from the public gaze perhaps as a method of our own self-protection and avoidance. In Stewart’s stark, minimal imagery there is no escaping that this is what will happen to us all.

PAUL THOMPSON
NAVIGATE
21 March - 31 May 2019

Documenting the many navigation markers dotted around the coastline of Britain, Navigate is a series of photographs taken over a period of three years by British artist Paul Thompson. The markers, vastly varied in appearance, lend distinct personalities becoming figurative symbols, always different, always the same, anchored in the seemingly endless sea. Shot at sunset using a large format film camera with exposure times ranging between one and eight seconds.

Brought up by the coast in the North East of England, Thompson devoted days, if not weeks, to finding the markers by foot across the country, recognising the hidden ‘language’ these small and unexceptional markers convey. Recalling Britain’s identity as an island nation and coincidentally beginning in 2016 when the country voted to leave the European Union, Navigate looks at Britain from the edges out.

DAVID STEWART
PAID CONTENT
28 SEPTEMBER - 23 NOVEMBER 2018

Paid Content is the latest body of work to be launched by acclaimed British Photographer David Stewart, the project will be simultaneously released as both a solo exhibition and photobook published by Browns Editions.

Stewart is gamekeeper turned poacher as he uses the setting of the advertising agency, an environment he has occupied for the past four decades to explore the changing face of workplace culture, and the wider dehumanising effect that is occurring due to the growth of large, faceless corporations and globalisation. Stewart creates highly detailed images which result in an unforgiving, penetrative treatment of his subjects and what they stand for – high gloss superficiality, smoke and mirrors.

ROBIN BROADBENT
REDUCTION, REDUCTION
3 MAY – 31 AUGUST 2018

Reduction, Reduction, a solo exhibition of works by internationally acclaimed photographic artist Robin Broadbent, marks the inaugural exhibition at Wren London. Broadbent’s works are an abstract documentation of today’s material culture. Through formal qualities of space, shape, light and line, Broadbent’s photographs demand attention as sensuous entities. These qualities are embodied in the series Cell, created by highlights in oil, taking what began as a black space and forming individual embryonic worlds.

For Reduction, Reduction, a selection of works have been taken from the recent book, The Photographic Work of Robin Broadbent, and have been produced specifically for this exhibition as silver gelatin and digital chromogenic photographic prints. The exhibition reflects the light & dark throughout Broadbent’s practice with the large scale artworks installed within two distinctly different rooms of the gallery.