Main Gallery
Simon Lewty
Absorption
11 April – 11 May, 2013
Lewty’s first exhibition of new work since 2008 follows the publication of his fascinating monograph, The Self as a Stranger. On this occasion his discovery of Thomas Shelton’s 17thC system of shorthand, Tachygraphy, provided a written surface after his own heart, beautiful, but opaque as to its meaning. In fact it was used by Samuel Pepys in his famous diary! Lewty taught himself this now obscure system and created drawings which reflect its mysterious-beauty.
“The word ‘tachygraphy’ seemed in a crazy way to invite a link with the tachisme of our own time: the two words share a root. Shelton and Pepys meet Hartung and Michaux! Art and Literature…” writes Lewty, telling us that he has also practised writing in the ‘italic’ typeface of his Adler typewriter, “which itself mimics the handwritten but bestows on it a neutral tone. Short and longhand are woven into a calligraphic skin like echoes of written speech.”
Lewty’s recent essay on ‘translation’, published in the literary journal Asymptote.
