Connaught Brown is delighted to present its first solo exhibition of work by esteemed British artist Simon Edmondson, exploring the theme of the artist’s studio. 

Created over the last two years, these works form a kind of self-portrait, mapping Edmondson’s life and artistry through paintings and drawings of his former work places. They represent the unseen struggle of artistic creation, they are both a battle ground and a sanctuary, a place of elation and torment, both lonely and full of friends. 

The series follows Edmondson’s progression from his 1983 studio Old Ford Road Studio in Hackney, London, to Carpenters Road in Stratford in 1985 and then to the Calle Fernando Barrachina in Madrid in 1991. Each of these buildings have long since been torn down for new developments so Edmondson’s depictions mark their history as well as his own. A past and continuity is also visualised through uncertain images of Edmondson’s works hanging on walls and easels.

 Edmondson painted these new works from memory and a few surviving photographs, focusing on the nostalgia and atmosphere of these irretrievable spaces. They show the furniture he found abandoned in Hackney and the stepladder that once belonged to his grandmother, all are which still to be found in his studio to this day. 

Born in London in 1955, Simon Edmondson relocated to Madrid in 1991 where he still currently resides. Edmondson first studied Fine Art at Kingston Polytechnic in London before completing post-graduate courses at Chelsea School of Art in 1978, and Syracuse University in 1980. He has exhibited widely across Europe, and his work is now in the collections of Deutsche Bank, Arts Council of Great Britain, Contemporary Art Society London, Kunsthaus Kollitsch and Bank of Austria, and many others.