News
Acquisition: Known and Strange Things Pass. The V&A Museum in London has acquired a 20 print installation for their permanent collection. This will be on display till 6th Febuary 2023 in a group show, Known and Strange: Photographs from the Collection. (click image below to see more)
Collaborative Show: Why are things this way? at LSE Gallery, London School of Economics, 3rd March - 12th April 2024
Solo Show: Known and Strange Things Pass at Robert Morat Galerie in Berlin, 2nd September - 30th October 2021 (click image below to see more)
Book: Known and Strange Things Pass is published by Skinnerboox
Selected Reviews
“Known and Strange Things Pass, looks at what lies beneath our online life. . . exploring the physical and metaphorical entanglement of the ocean and the internet.” The Guardian
“It is about the immediacy of touch and the commonplace miracle of action at a distance; the porosity of the boundaries that hold things apart, and the fragility of the bonds that lock them together. . . The ostensible subject is the transatlantic communications cables linking the UK and North America. But the cables are only one thread in a web of analogy that explores what it means to be in the world at the present moment.” Eugenie Shinkle, 1000 Words Magazine
“Andy Sewell pushes the boundaries of documentary photography telling a story between the visible and the invisible.” Vogue Italia
“A remarkable, multivalent study” British Journal of Photography
Andy’s photography possesses a very strong narrative capacity, but a silent one. His images are very often the white space between two words, the moment of turning a page within a story, what happens while blinking. . . This book is one of those rare examples in which the design is inseparable from the images – yet they are not in sync, as each follows its own baseline. As if reproducing the myriad of storylines going each given moment through that underwater cable, different narratives chase each other and play in relay through the pages. . . Andy Sewell adds with his body of work a chapter in the conversation on picturing the invisible. . . he does so by making use of the missing parts. The empty space. The glitchy space, the non linear sequences forcing us to go back again, to look again, more carefully. Elisa Medde, C4 Journal
“Turning the pages I felt a unique sense of floating, inorganic images interspersed from time to time brought me back to the material world, I was in a strange fluctuation. It is the reality of our life today. . . This is a book that will make us think again about the world we live in.” Rinko Kawauchi
“Magnificent, a compelling and complex work” David Campany
Group Show: Known and Strange Things Pass at C/O Berlin in Songs of the Sky, Photography & The Cloud. 11/12/2021 - 21/04/22 (click image below to see more)
Acquisition: The MAST Foundation, 22 prints (60x45cm) from Known and Strange Things Pass
Feature: London Altarpiece in Financial Times Magazine
Feature: Known and Strange Things Pass in The Guardian
Review: Known and Strange Things Pass in Vogue Italia
Interview: Known and Strange Things Pass in Der Greif
Interview: Known and Strange Things Pass in Paper Journal
Interview: Known and Strange Things Pass in ASX
Review: 1000 Words
“As the ocean meets the shore it exists, for a moment, in an unsettled form, a liquid mass leavened with air and transformed into foam. Known and Strange Things Pass is a meditation on the complex ecstasy bound up with this fluidity, this passage from one state to another.“
You can read the full essay here
16 page feature on Known and Strange Things Pass in Vrij Nederland Magazine
There are works from Something like a Nest included in a show, curated by Isa Bonnet, in Arles this summer.
Something like a Nest was shown recently in at Bunkier Sztuki Gallery, Krakow, as part of You Are What You Eat curated by Natasha Christia for Krakow Photomonth.
The exhibition Secret Rivers is currently on at the Museum of London. It includes treasures pulled from the mud, some great maps and this work from The Heath.
The Museum of London acquired a complete set of prints from The Heath with assistance from The Art Fund.
The first exhibition of Known and Strange Things Pass at Lianzhou Foto, China
Instagram @SewellAnd
Selected reviews
“A sustained visual meditation on the contemporary English countryside – a place defined by often conflicting social and economic interests, and our reluctantly surrendered received notions of the pastoral and the sublime. Sewell makes us think more deeply about what the countryside means” The Guardian
“He doesn’t want to shatter our illusions, merely quieten them – to allow us to see the complexity of what’s before us.” Financial Times
“Portraits of the act of observation.” British Journal of Photography
"A series of intensely concentrated impressions that reward and indeed encourage a slow, measured drinking-in." The Telegraph
“such is the assurance of Sewell’s vision and strength of narrative quality that. . . our perception roams freely, gradually absorbing the rich suggestiveness of the people, places and environments. . . a clever, multi-layered look at our idea of rural life, done with understatement and visual acuity.”a-n
“matured from a tradition focused on landscape towards photography as metaphor”. American Suburb X
Selected reviews
“At seventy-five and with the world the way that it is, I sometimes come close to losing heart, but when I see work like this I’m back in the game. The Heath is a beautiful job. Honest about mixed evidence… open to both joy and sorrow.” Robert Adams
“a book of suggestion, a landscape of the imagination as well as a record of a real and familiar place. A classic of understated observation.” The Guardian
"A stunning set of photographs… I urge you to support this emerging talent and order this book before it is acknowledged as a classic contribution to our photographic culture.” Martin Parr
“With a quiet, precise and sometimes playful eye Andy Sewell’s photographs negotiate this shared territory of the heath’s managed wilderness. While using his camera to frame the “still moments” a place like the heath can gift us, he never allows us to forget the human presence woven through the DNA of its existence.” Financial Times
“A series of photographs that have uncovered the subtle beauty of the terrain, as well as his personal maturity in photographic approach. The photographer’s intelligent portrayal of his subject isn’t for the casual viewer, but rather for those who appreciate the challenge of consuming the complexities a powerful narrative.” Photoeye Magazine
Selected Reviews
“Known and Strange Things Pass, looks at what lies beneath our online life. . . exploring the physical and metaphorical entanglement of the ocean and the internet.” The Guardian
“It is about the immediacy of touch and the commonplace miracle of action at a distance; the porosity of the boundaries that hold things apart, and the fragility of the bonds that lock them together. . . The ostensible subject is the transatlantic communications cables linking the UK and North America. But the cables are only one thread in a web of analogy that explores what it means to be in the world at the present moment.” Eugenie Shinkle, 1000 Words Magazine
“Turning the pages I felt a unique sense of floating, inorganic images interspersed from time to time brought me back to the material world, I was in a strange fluctuation. It is the reality of our life today. . . This is a book that will make us think again about the world we live in.” Rinko Kawauchi
“A remarkable, multivalent study” British Journal of Photography
“Magnificent, a compelling and complex work” David Campany