Lewis Andrews

Forge

Indian Ink on Paper. 210mm x 297mm – 2020.

Destruction of Our Pale Blue Dot III

Melted Ice and Indian Ink on Watercolour Paper. 210mm x 297mm – 2020

“. In theory, then, speaking as an artist, I could take a large number of scientific data and make a series of artworks and increase the scale of that data slowly. Making it easier for the audience to contemplate the information contained within the work.”

From Lewis’s Master’s thesis ‘Attempting to Image the Impossible’, 2021.

Since 2019, Lewis has participated in 125+ exhibitions across the UK and internationally with many notable achievements. Lewis held his first solo show ‘186,000mi/s’ whilst studying at Leeds Arts University in 2018 at Wharf Chambers, Leeds, UK. Lewis was one of the artists picked to participate in the Aon Community Art Awards program 2019 running through 2021 with his oceanic sublime photography work displayed in Aon Headquarters, London. In November 2020, Lewis was selected to participate in the Mayes Creative Watching the Sun: Virtual Residency alongside other artists with an interest in astronomy and ancient astrology. Lewis went on to participate in two more virtual arts-science residences with Mayes Creative. work from the residency was included in a publication that now resides within the Royal Astronomy Society Archive. Lewis joined Mayes Creative once again for their January 2024 residency in the Cot Valley, Cornwall, UK. Lewis has formed strong relations with the Brazilian art organisation Artlymix and the Georgian-based gallery Collect Art. As of present, Lewis has featured in 16+ exhibitions with Artlymix in Sao Paulo, Brazil and 14+ of Collect Art’s publications & Digital exhibitions to name a few of his achievements. Lewis continues to work from his studio based in Leeds, UK.

– New Knowledge – New Viewpoints / Impossible Viewpoints – Comprehension – Visualising Data – Collapsing Distances – Answering Questions – Open Up Conversations – Condensing Information – A Catalyst for information – Understanding or attempting to Understand

The ten characteristics stated are the result of investigations conducted during Lewis’s time on his Masters degree in attempting to understand ‘The Informative Encounter’ as a methodology of working. Similarities between all of them can be made in the sense that they are all used to try and understand or attempt to understand an entity, process, or scientific data. So much so that ‘Understanding or attempting to understand’ is its own characteristic. Every piece of work within Lewis’s practice also conforms to one or more of the characteristics.

So, if there is a heavy focus on attempting to try and understand scientific information, one must ask the question of where the artwork comes in and play a role. The answers are also within the characteristics. Take for example Lewis’s ‘Cosmos’ drawings which offer a new perspective to the viewer other than the photograph from a telescope. Collapsing the distances has been used in Lewis’s ‘Origins’ artworks to establish the links between the atoms in your body to the delicate life cycles of stars which fuse these same atoms within their cores before dying in spectacular explosions, a supernova. It’s for this reason that the characteristics above are not just those of the resulting artworks, but also Lewis’s practice as a whole.

Lewis’s artworks seem to interact and behave in a means that conforms to the theory of translating scientific information into something visual in an attempt to convey information to its viewer. If we were to think then of the audience in one room and a wealth of scientific information in another room, does that make Lewis and his practice (as well as any other artist working with this technique) a doorway?  Possibly metaphorically. It’s important to note here that artists and artworks are not the only possible doorways into this room of scientific information. A simple internet search could be another metaphorical doorway. Either way, this is why Lewis feels his work is a conduit. Attempting to connect the two and allowing the viewer to gain a new understanding of scientific information.

However, sometimes the work itself will only be able to communicate part of the subject matter. Instead, it could offer snippets to the viewer, enough to open up conversations that may lead them to further research the subject matter. The description of the activity in the quote from Lewis’s thesis above is what Lewis refers to as an ‘Informative Encounter’. The act of the viewer gaining one of the ten aims previously spoken of through the communicative properties of the artwork.