‘The door opened and my jaw dropped’: amazing sculptures seen by 20 people | Art and design

Ray Exworth spent six decades creating one of Britain’s most spectacular paintings – and no one has ever seen it. Hidden within a labyrinth of sheds on a small Cornish cottage, its vast, imposing buildings are closed off from the world, visited only by a few. Even his wife Susie, 92 years old, did not stay outside. I couldn’t visit without being invited! he remembers.

Exworth, who died in 2015 at the age of 84, had only one major exhibition in his life, at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1975. Since then, the man who would become one of Britain’s most famous artists has virtually disappeared. His works – large, complex and ambitious, assembled from many salvaged materials – remained where he left them: filling seven studios and a scattering of containers, invisible.

A new book by photographer Jem Southam, Ray’s Sheds, offers access to Exworth’s extraordinary landscape for the first time. Southam believes that only 20 people saw the inside of Ray’s cabins. His book is not only a detailed account of a unique art that may never see the light of day, but a fascinating exploration of what it means to be an artist – and the purpose of art – when it is not in the public eye.

Exworth was born in 1930 in Ipswich, the eldest of five children. His father, Southam tells me, was a skilled but underpaid sandblaster who also made wartime toys for his children. “Ray was inspired by his father’s creativity and creativity,” says Southam.

The family’s home was bombed and burned in 1941; then their next house was bombed again. These painful wartime experiences left their mark on Exworth – his sculptures repeatedly return to childhood memories and objects: toys, dolls, even the garden at the family home that his father has rebuilt since his return. Exworth created an exact image of the garden from memory, a 60ft by 30ft ground-based sculpture of pitchforks, spades, lettuce, flowering roses and bamboo trees – all made of crushed lead. The work, one of three leading Exworth-style pieces, does not appear in Southam’s new book – it is so large that it is kept in a smaller container.

Southam first met Exworth in the 1980s. One day Southam received a call from the artist inviting him to come and photograph his work. “I don’t know how he heard about me, but I reluctantly went to his little house. He led me through the winding garden to the first shed – and as soon as the door opened and I looked inside, like everyone else who has been there, my jaw dropped. What was inside was amazing. I knew I was in the presence of a wonderful artist.”

The first area that Southam encountered is known as the circus shed – a place that is well depicted in Southam’s photographs in the book, a sculpture area (Exworth never called it a “set”) wrapped and piled from floor to ceiling with pieces made from whatever Exworth could get his hands on – plaster tools, lined with newspapers and rags, cloth and glass, glass, glass, metal, metal, metal, metal, wood, wood, wood, wood, metal, wood, wood, wood, wood, plastic, etc. and intelligence and skill. All the great circus performers, actors, horses, magicians – and a juggler with ice balls in the air are just some of the countless figures in the world of wonder. For the juggler’s balls, Exworth also used steel nails from carpenter’s chairs, hammering and welding them together to form a frame, a complex process that would take months. Exworth worked at the Circus six days a week for ten years.

Exworth got the idea, Southam says, while working at the Meteorological Office (as part of his national service in the RAF), when he was constantly passing Piccadilly Circus, day and night. “In a way they became real circles – wherever he started, his ideas took him.”

Although Susie remembers being “impressed with his work” the first time she entered the sheds, several years after Exworth began working in the sheds. “I couldn’t compare the man I knew in our everyday life to the man who had gone into the shed to work.” The pictures capture the low light and depth of space, countless explorations of endless mountains of work, some still there, partially covered with paper.

Through seven sheds, each with its own atmosphere and theme, with life-size, life-like figures and animals, as well as miniatures, a table of finds, ladders, old papers, boxes, containers, complex combinations of colors and tools, some unidentified and unfinished. The workshop showcases the breadth and scope of Exworth’s technology and thinking – everything from drills, jigsaws, sanders and glass cutters to grinders, putty and small paint brushes.

Southam initially showed 12 on Exworth’s plate camera, to call for help. The two became friends – but for the next 30 years, “no matter how hard I tried, he wouldn’t let me in the shirts and the camera again”.

It was after Exworth’s death that Southam approached Susie to ask if she would make a series of portraits of the work in the sheds, as a means of preservation. The book took 10 years to create – Southam initially shot everything he could on a digital camera, which allowed him to enter the tight corners of the full metal, “but I wasn’t satisfied with the pictures because they didn’t really show what it felt like to be inside this place, surrounded by this work”. He also brought a large, 8×10 Victorian box camera with a tripod, “with a very wide, almost incredible lens” that allowed him to photograph the area from all angles.

Southam’s book contains nearly 60 photographs, as well as stories about his experiences with Ray and in his sheds. There are many other works that Southam could not photograph or place – such as the 700 charcoal drawings Exworth made of the blackbirds that visit the family’s backyard every day.

David Heseltine was a long-time friend of Exworth and a former colleague at Falmouth School of Art – where Exworth was head of sculpture from 1959 to 1974. Heseltine recalls that “he was well read and his knowledge of history was comprehensive. He found the art and inspiration of Henry Moore and Jacob Epstein, although his creative vision was opposed to the work of many of his contemporaries, who he thought were unsympathetic.”

When Exworth stopped teaching to devote himself to his activities, he seems to have had fewer desires than to sit quietly in his sheds, working on his wild vision – which led him back to happy times.

“He was reclusive and, although he was described as easy on the Arts Council’s acquisitions committee, he was kind, compassionate and passionate about people and all walks of life,” says Heseltine. “He was absolutely sure of his vision, but incredibly humble about what he accomplished.”

Ray’s Sheds, Heseltine adds, “are certainly more than historical and integral to Ray’s legacy.” Given that the sculptures are static and that Ray was more concerned with making them than with mounting them, this book will be important in introducing Ray’s work to a wider audience, appreciating its importance, and acknowledging its importance. to be worthy of being one of the first sculptors of our time.”

The book is also about the artist’s unique, unwavering dedication to his craft without pretense. “To me, he was a true artist – solving problems of how to make things.” He was involved in production, and found it more rewarding than showing it.

As for Susie, she still goes to the sheds regularly – because, she says, “there is a strong feeling of Ray’s presence in everything”.