Artist: Dick Jewell

This exhibition brings together more than seventy works from Jewell’s five-decade career, including collages and photographic assemblages, film installations, digital montages, and prints. It marks the artist’s first major retrospective and is accompanied by the publication of Catalogue: Dick Jewell.

Jewell’s conceptual practice is grounded in social observations that question human behaviour through parody, irony and humour. Since 1968—when he began salvaging discarded photobooth images—his interest in collecting, grouping, and reproducing photographs has evolved to encompass ever larger sets of visual material.

Responding to an ever-shifting media environment, Jewell’s work has continually evolved alongside changes in how images are produced and circulated. This exhibition traces that parallel movement—from hand-collaged newspaper and magazine compositions of the 1970s, to television imagery, and ultimately to internet-based montages created with Photoshop.

Circumspect about this history, Jewell brings a compellingly irreverent and self-aware attitude to our image-driven environment. Using timelapse compositions and collage techniques, he creates absurd juxtapositions of violent news footage, seductive advertising, scripted dramatisations, and off-the-cuff documentary footage. These fragments are woven together through a characteristic humour and quick-witted sense of the present.

Drawing on photographs from diverse contexts, Jewell also reveals unexpected cultural connections between disparate images. One work, for example, comprises photographs received by mail from a vast network of individuals across England and America who share his surname.

From the phenomenon of photobombing to the eroticisation of armpits in classical sculpture, Jewell’s comparative approach reframes everyday material to expose and invert the anachronistic value systems of an image-saturated society. His graphically incisive selections invite viewers to adopt a critical stance, recognising the enduring influence of visual messages in contemporary life.

Dick Jewell lives and works in London. Since graduating from Royal College of Art in 1978, his work has developed to span photography, printmaking, collage, film and publications.

Jewell’s seminal book Found Photos was published in 1979, and his first solo exhibition was held at Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff, the following year. In the 1980s he founded and ran PRE, a record label under the Charisma Records umbrella, and participated in group exhibitions at institutions including the Stedelijk Museum and the Serpentine Gallery. Jewell’s films from the 1980s and ‘90s range from documentaries shot in the Kalahari Desert to twenty one episodes filmed at the legendary Kinky Gerlinky club nights. His moving image work has been screened at Venice Biennale, Tate Liverpool, Tate Modern and the ICA. Jewell continues to work as an independent artist, alongside taking on select commercial projects and teaching at the Royal College of Art. He is represented in public collections including the Stedelijk Museum, Victoria & Albert Museum, Arts Council of Great Britain, Hayward Gallery, Newport Museum, Leeds Art Gallery, Camden Libraries, and Dudley Museum.