The Voice in the Shadow - Bo Lee & Workman - Bruton

Solo Exhibition
May 19 - June 24 2023

The inaugural exhibition of Bo Lee and Workman is a solo presentation of new work by Cornwall-based artist Jonathan Michael Ray.

Ray takes his inspiration from a variety of sources such as ancient alphabets, archaeological collections, and sacred sites, but also science-fiction, fantasy and modern abstraction. Titled The Voice in the Shadow (19 May – 24 June), the site-specific project in the converted Methodist church, consists of mixed-media works, exploring the multi-layered histories, fictions and beliefs assigned to artefacts through craftsmanship and the markings of time. Fascinated by archaeological discoveries, the artist gives these objects new voices, new functions that blur between dream, myth and memory, and creates an atmosphere of the esoteric, a symbiosis of the secular and the sacred.

Of his method, Ray says: “Collecting is at the heart of my practice. Objects, materials, ideas, process, words. This is my world-building; A complex and vague amalgamation of everything that helps me question and understand existence.”

The exhibition is accompanied by a new sound work, Reliqua, which incorporates music played on the church’s organ, created in collaboration with sound artist Benedict Mortimer.

Lith - Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens

Lith is a new site specific sculptural work by Jonathan Michael Ray, commissioned by Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens.

The structure, built from 300 brick sized blocks of Cornish granite from Bodmin, holds resonance with the larger menhirs (standing stones) and engine house chimney stacks that litter the historic landscape of West Cornwall.
Inspired by the surface and engravings of ancient stones far and wide, and the process of automatic writing, or spirit writing, the face of each block has been inscribed and gilded with a mysterious and indecipherable script.

The word "Lith", used as a prefix in "lithography" and suffix in "monolith" comes from the Greek, lithos, meaning "stone".
The word also means "a limb".

Photography by Steve Tanner

Long Way Home - Anima Mundi - St Ives

Solo Exhibition
Oct 21 - Dec 5 2022
Opening reception Friday 21 October 6-9pm

Much of Jonathan Michael Ray’s art practice, primarily sculptural, utilizing a diverse and ever growing skillset of medium and mode, has become deeply connected to his surroundings. Routine exploration of the landscape, both rural and urban, often leads to a gathering of artefacts that may then become the basis of new works. Though potentially far removed from their origin, through a process of reassembly, these materials imbue each piece with rich, multi-layered histories, that in turn communicate something of the physical and metaphysical experience.

Long Way Home embraces this duality, where works are loosely divided to perhaps reflect both the journey through the exterior landscape and an internal journey in search of something other…

For more information visit Anima Mundi online.

Bo Lee and Workman

Delighted to announce I am now represented by Bo Lee and Workman

Bo Lee and Workman is a new gallery in Bruton, Somerset, with an ethos of commitment to a community of contemporary artists and supporters. The gallery represents artists with a distinct identity and attention to detail who use unique forms of expression through different mediums, namely painting and sculpture.

Founded by Jemma Hickman of bo.lee gallery and Alice Workman, previously Senior Director, Cultural Centres Europe at Hauser & Wirth, who collectively bring over 30 years of experience of working within the art world.

Wilhelmina Barns-Graham & Jonathan Michael Ray - TATE ST IVES

May 28th - October 2nd 2022

An exhibition bringing together two artists connected with West Cornwall

While separated by time, as well as the media and form their works take, both artists draw inspiration from the local landscape, exploring the idea that there is more to experience in nature than can be found on the surface.

Scottish-born artist Wilhelmina Barns-Graham CBE (1912–2004) was based in St Ives for much of her life. The exhibition features paintings by Barns-Graham from throughout her career, many of which reference the terrain and natural resources of Cornwall.

Jonathan Michael Ray’s (b.1984) practice incorporates photography, printmaking, found objects, stained glass and local stone. His recent works share with Barns-Graham in a fascination with geology and reflect on the ancient significance of landscape and humankind’s interactions with it.

TATE ST IVES
Porthmeor Beach, St Ives,
Cornwall TR26 1TG
Visitor and ticket info - Link

UBI.UMBRA.CADIT

Spanning the past five years, this limited edition book showcases new and previously unseen artworks, including all the works from the 2022 exhibition at TATE ST IVES, and is accompanied by an essay, 'The Idle Cloth', by London-based curator and writer Elaine Tam.

210 x 266mm // 64pp
Dust Jacket with Tipped-in C-Type print.
Offset Printed
Edition of 400

Published and available to buy from Antler Press

Supported by Cultivator Cornwall, Arts Council England and Cornwall Council

FLOCK - Bo Lee and Workman, Bruton

Group exhibition
May 20th - June 11th 2022

Held at a beautiful chapel on the edge of Bruton, the inaugural exhibition by Bo Lee and Workman features a selection of sculptors repurposing different forms and materials essential to collective rituals, habits and principles. In these tactile sculptures, objects with religious or domestic connotations are made playful, witty or surreal. Made from predominantly natural and recycled materials, they embody a sense of longing for fading practices that are kinder to the earth.

Artists include Olivia Bax, Will Cruickshank, Laura Ford, Des Hughes, Jonathan Michael Ray and Nika Neelova . The exhibition will support St Peter's Church, a Grade II listed Chapel in Redlynch, which will be home to additional events in association with the gallery this summer.

St Peter's Church, Redlynch,
Bruton, Somerset BA10 0NH

Download press release

Gathering - Haarlem Artspace, Wirksworth

Group exhibition
November 28th - December 19th 2021
Private view opening on Friday 26th of November 6.30-8pm.

Curated by Verity Birt and Jonathan Michael Ray
Exhibiting Artists: Simon Bayliss, Verity Birt, Ilker Cinarel, Steve Claydon, Georgia Gendall, Dan Howard-Birt, Jonathan Michael Ray, Abigail Reynolds, Tom Sewell and Lucy Stein.

From prehistoric sites to folk rituals & rave music, ten artists explore the communal act of intimacy through ‘Gathering’. 

The first cultural device was likely a recipient or container to bring food and special objects home, rather than a weapon for killing with. Gathering-in and holding objects together in a powerful relation and sharing them with others, is what we humans first learnt to do as a curious and altruistic species.

Initially inspired by Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, ‘Gathering’ reflects a communal act of intimacy shared between people, site and materials; creating connections, bonds and empathy with community and landscape. From prehistoric sites of community gathering and contemporary folk rituals, to rural ‘honesty’ customs, group therapy and rave music, 10 rurally based artists explore the act of gathering and its value today after a year of travel restrictions and social isolation.

If it is a human thing to do, to put something you want, because it’s useful, edible, or beautiful, into a bag, or a basket …and then take it home with you, home being another, larger kind of …container for people, and then later on you take it out and eat it or share it …or put it in the shrine or the museum, the holy place, the area that contains what is sacred— if to do that is human, if that’s what it takes, then I am a human being after all.

Ursula K. Le Guin

Generously supported with funding from Arts Council England
Photography by Will Slater
Poster design by Tom Sewell @itsart.studio

Mono No Aware - Auction House, Cornwall

Solo exhibition
Fri 5 - Sun 14 November 2021
Opening Reception Sat 6 November 2-6pm

In Mono No Aware, an exhibition of new works, artist Jonathan Michael Ray makes use of a wide range of past and present-time objects, material and processes, brought together in strangely familiar modes of display. The result is assemblage in many forms, including video, print, stained glass, drawing and sculpture. The title of the show translates as “the pathos of things”: a Japanese term for an awareness of, and gentle sadness for the transient quality of life.

Ray’s work in this installation is inspired by ideas of sacred spaces: including churches, historic sites, nature and museum collections, and considers the journeys and pilgrimages we all make in our lives. His work alludes to the sublime power that inanimate material and objects can contain when we give them space, time and authority to do so.

Read the exhibition text Hidden Voices by Martin Holman here

Meet me at the cemetery gates - DUST Ltd, Penzance, Cornwall

Solo exhibition
September 4 - October 30 2021

Lucy Willow, Artist and Senior Lecturer in fine art at Falmouth University, invited me to exhibit a some works in her shop/project space: DUST Ltd aka Art of Grief - the theme being the song “Cemetery Gates” by The Smiths.

“THE ART OF GRIEF Gallery and Shop contains a collection of artworks about death, grief and memorialisation. It is also an informal place to discuss funerals and end of life care”. - A very special and unique space, definitely worth visiting if you are in the area.

Works include:
Holy Reunion, 85x65cm, antique stained glass, lead and oak
Ere long done do does did, 80x60cm, Welsh slate and ink
We are but dust and shadow, 35x20x45cm, stereoscopic photograph, fossil, coin, thimble, glass, slate and steel

National Sculpture Prize 2021 - Broomhill Estate, Devon

July 1st - October 31st 2021
Winner announced November 2021

A Large Boulder the Size of Small Boulder, 2021
Serpentine stone and enamel paint
150x75x100cm

“A large boulder the size of a small boulder” is made from a raw block of serpentine stone, from the Lizard Peninsula in Cornwall. This stone has been cut in half, polished, engraved and gilded on both of the cut surfaces. The jumbled texts—taken from protest slogans and media headlines from throughout the year 2020—are mirrored, like the words within a stick of seaside confectionary rock. The two halves are positioned so as to suggest the boulder was split on impact, revealing its hidden message for the first time, millions of years from now. 

This serpentine rock from Cornwall represents remnants of an ancient ocean floor and the Earth's mantle, thrust up to form what is now the most southerly part of mainland Britain. The rock formations of the Lizard peninsula make-up one of the most interesting suite of rocks in Britain, and a Pre-Cambrian age (older than 600 million years) has been assigned to them. Spiritually, Serpentine is highly regarded as a stone of Mother Earth, rebirth and creation, and the Cornish variant has a unique dark red, brown and black colouring, which appears like marble when polished to a wonderfully deep sheen.

Like the veining of the stone itself, which is mirrored on the cut surfaces, messages are engraved and gilded onto the two sides. One side is readable while the other is reversed. The layered words and phrases are difficult to read at first, but with closer inspection some texts become clear and the viewer may decipher meaning from the tangle of letters. These protest slogans, political statements and media headlines appeared around the world and throughout the year of 2020.

2020 has been one of most extraordinary and challenging years in recent history. Just as human beings create an impact on their physical surroundings, the ferocity of the events of this year will also leave their mark. But as time goes by, 2020 and all it contained, will become just another layer in time. Perhaps one day—in approximately another 600 million years—a record of this year may be rediscovered and quizzically examined by another being. Imagine they decide this mysterious discovery is of some importance. They may display these findings in a way, just as we do with fossils or stone age memorials within our museums and encyclopaedias.

The title of the work eludes to a popular internet meme from 2020.

Gathering - Gray’s Wharf, Penryn

Group exhibition
May 29 - June 13 2021
THU - SUN / 12 - 6
Organised by Jonathan Michael Ray and Verity Birt.

Featured on artcornwall with a written response by Martin Holman.

‘Gathering' reflects a communal act of intimacy shared between people, site and materials. Local artists will reflect on this theme through their interdisciplinary practice to explore the act of gathering and its value in the aftermath of the pandemic.

Exhibiting Artists:Simon Bayliss, Verity Birt, Ilker Cinarel, Steve Claydon, Georgia Gendall, Dan Howard-Birt, Jonathan Michael Ray, Abigail Reynolds, Tom Sewell and Lucy Stein.

Generously supported with funding from Arts Council England and FEAST Cornwall
Photography by Oliver Udy @oliverudy
Poster design by Tom Sewell @itsart.studio

3.1 - bo.lee gallery, London

March 20 – April 11 2020
Gallery closed to visitors due to the Covid19 outbreak
View exhibition online here

For their spring 2020 programme, bo.lee gallery will present three exhibitions, each featuring three works by three different artists. Titled 3.1, 3.2 and 3.3, these are inspired by the rule of three, the writing principle that a trio is more pleasing and effective and offers the minimum quantity required to form a rhythm or pattern. This simple rule enables a playful visual freedom and a dialogue to emerge between the selected artists. To open the programme, 3.1 will draw together works by three British artists Jonathan Michael Ray, Jess Littlewood and Rebecca Partridge.

At the Root - InRoads, Galleria Ramo

At the Root is a new video work curated by Martin Holman for Galleria Ramo’s online series “InRoads”. It was created in response to the following quote:

The project has been made in collaboration with the sound artist and musician Benedict Mortimer, and began with exploring a number of landscapes in Cornwall, England. Working with archive footage from the John Rossiter Estate and Kresen Kernow, as well as both analogue and digital footage captured by the artist, the video’s journey navigates a complex dreamlike narrative, weaving together history, place, nature, and something beyond the conscious mind or terra firma.

Press Release or for more information on the InRoads project and to see other video works from the series visit the gallery website

Special thanks to:
Benedict Mortimer, Martin Holman, Simon David, Estate of John Rossiter and Kresen Kernow

Unbounded: Contemporary Art Practices in Cornwall

Unbounded is an exhibition of contemporary art exploring some of the many layers of Cornwall’s social and environmental landscapes. It showcases work by 15 artists, each working in or deeply connected to Cornwall.

2 November 2019 – 26 January 2020

More information here

Exhibition photographs by Rupert White