Jenny Lewis - Undertow
UnBecoming explores the artist's confrontation of living with a chronic invisible illness while simultaneously navigating the unknown territory of midlife. These themes remain taboo in our wider cultural consciousness, often stigmatised and surrounded by shame. The work responds to personal experiences and histories to confront the politics of gender, representation and the medically unexplained.
Jenny Lewis is an award-winning artist. Having been an editorial portrait photographer for twenty-five years, her practice has now expanded. Lewis creates a visual dialogue challenging the patriarchal narrative of the female experience. She is interested in themes of transition, loss, and reconnection, disrupting and reassembling the language and constraints of photography. Her current work navigates and confronts challenging aspects of selfhood, subverting the more traditional genre of portraiture.
Lewis’s projects have been extensively exhibited nationally and internationally in institutions such as The National Portrait Gallery, London, the Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool, and Photo 22, Melbourne, as well as a range of permanent public artworks in community Spaces. Her works are part of collections including the National Portrait Gallery, Wellcome Collection, Birthrites Collection and Pallant House Collection. She has published three monographs with Hoxton Mini Press, One Day Young, Hackney Studios and One Hundred Years. Her work is rooted in a profound and intimate relationship to her community, which she has been part of for 26 years.
UnBecoming explores the artist's confrontation of living with a chronic invisible illness while simultaneously navigating the unknown territory of midlife. These themes remain taboo in our wider cultural consciousness, often stigmatised and surrounded by shame. The work responds to personal experiences and histories to confront the politics of gender, representation and the medically unexplained.
Jenny Lewis is an award-winning artist. Having been an editorial portrait photographer for twenty-five years, her practice has now expanded. Lewis creates a visual dialogue challenging the patriarchal narrative of the female experience. She is interested in themes of transition, loss, and reconnection, disrupting and reassembling the language and constraints of photography. Her current work navigates and confronts challenging aspects of selfhood, subverting the more traditional genre of portraiture.
Lewis’s projects have been extensively exhibited nationally and internationally in institutions such as The National Portrait Gallery, London, the Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool, and Photo 22, Melbourne, as well as a range of permanent public artworks in community Spaces. Her works are part of collections including the National Portrait Gallery, Wellcome Collection, Birthrites Collection and Pallant House Collection. She has published three monographs with Hoxton Mini Press, One Day Young, Hackney Studios and One Hundred Years. Her work is rooted in a profound and intimate relationship to her community, which she has been part of for 26 years.