Photographer Jem Southam has revealed the hidden sculptures of Cornish artist Ray Exworth in a new book, Ray's Sheds, after Exworth died in 2015 aged 84. Exworth spent six decades building sprawling, obsessive constructions from salvaged materials inside a labyrinth of seven studio sheds and several shipping containers on a remote smallholding; Southam says only about 20 people ever saw the interiors. Exworth had one major exhibition in his lifetime at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1975 but otherwise kept his work private, largely barring even his wife Susie, 92, from visiting. Southam first visited in the 1980s and photographed spaces such as the so called circus shed, a floor to ceiling sculptural environment of plaster armatures, newspaper, rags, metal, wood, textiles, glass, string and wax. The works repeatedly reference Exworth’s wartime childhood memories, including clowns, dolls and a one to one lead replica of his family garden measuring 60ft by 30ft that is stored in a container because of its scale. Ray's Sheds provides the first substantial public documentation of an extensive body of work that has until now remained in situ and largely unseen, and it frames Exworth’s practice as an inquiry into making when presentation is not the primary aim.
