The UK sculptor Raymond ‘Ray’ Exworth is not a familiar name to many. He exhibited rarely, and while there was a notable London solo show, Felixstowe Remembered (1975) at the Whitechapel Gallery, it might be safe to assume that teaching, rather than art, defined his working life.
As a teacher he was distinguished, founding the sculpture department at Falmouth School of Art and twice winning an Arts Council Major Award (Kestle Barton 2016), yet the assumption collapses at the door of his studios. With Ray’s Sheds (2026), friend and fellow artist Jem Southam walks us through these spaces, revealing the artworks and the working life that shaped a quiet, prodigious practice.
Southam, a renowned photographer whose own reflective practice often captures the dark intensity of nature, finds a human muse in Exworth’s sheds. The photographs show sculptures resting amongst the jumble like ancient treasures, collections of objects given meaning through their assemblage. At their centre sits The Circus, an unfinished work of three rings crowded with fabricated objects and plaster figures, nine years in the making (Kestle Barton 2015). When Arts Council buyers tracked Exworth down in 1984, drawn west by his reputation as ‘a sculptor of probable genius’, they found seven studio-sheds filled with invention (Kestle Barton 2011). Reminiscent of the nostalgic boxes of Joseph Cornell, an artist whose shadow box constructions find a clear echo in Exworth’s work, the images trace the outline of a creative vision. Outside the gallery context they carry an autochthonic quality, like the contents of decades of thought. Time and mind compressed; each captured image contains fragments of a whispered story that remains audible, vital, and all the more mysterious since Exworth’s passing in 2015.
For those familiar with Southam’s work there is an intimacy in these pictures that feels like new ground. It is not one of warmth or friendship but of the transcendent inclusivity of ideas, where inspiration reaches beyond the physical, everywhere in the stillness of a moment.
Exhibition Notes: Jem Southam book launch. Ray’s Sheds, Saturday 11 July 2026 from 2pm – 5pm
“Photography offers a way to see inside the sheds and this book a means for his remarkable sculptures to reach a much wider audience.” — Jem Southam
Kestle Barton is pleased to host the launch of Ray’s Sheds, a new publication by photographer Jem Southam, on Saturday 11 July. The afternoon will include drinks in the garden and a talk in the studio. Sarah Gillespie’s exhibition Birded and Eyed will also be on show in the gallery. Ray’s Sheds brings together photographs, texts and design by Jem Southam in a new 120-page publication printed by Narayana Press in Denmark. The book contains around 50 plates made from 10×8 inch analogue negatives alongside contextual photographs and short texts.
The book documents the extraordinary studio sheds of sculptor Ray Exworth (1939–2015), where he worked in relative isolation from 1967 until his death. Across a series of densely packed spaces, Exworth made large and complex sculptural works from plaster, wood, metal, stone, wax, textiles, paper and found objects. Few people ever saw the work in situ and much of it is unlikely ever to leave the sheds. During his lifetime Exworth exhibited only rarely, including a solo exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1975 and later presentations at Royal Cornwall Museum, Truro. The sheds themselves became an extension of the works they contained: crowded, intricate spaces shaped over decades of sustained and intensely private activity.
Southam first visited Ray and Susie Exworth in 1983 to photograph the studios for a grant application, beginning a friendship that continued for more than thirty years. Following Ray’s death in 2015, Southam returned to the sheds with Susie Exworth’s support to make a more extensive photographic record of the work. Since 2011, Kestle Barton has presented a series of exhibitions and projects connected to Ray Exworth’s work, including A Shutter Came Down (2011), Ray’s Sheds: The Hidden Work of Ray Exworth (2016), and Naomi Frears’ Ray and Susie (2021). Jem Southam is one of Kestle Barton’s Associate Artists, and Ray’s Sheds continues a longstanding dialogue between artist, photographer and place, offering a remarkable insight into a rarely seen body of work.
Jem Southam book launch. Ray’s Sheds. Saturday 11 July 2026 from 2pm – 5pm
About Ray Exworth
About Jem Southam
Jem Southam is one of Britain’s foremost photographers, internationally recognised for his large-format landscape photography and photographic books. Over several decades he has made influential bodies of work exploring the relationship between landscape, memory and human intervention, often returning repeatedly to particular places over long periods of time.
His work has been exhibited widely in Britain and internationally, including exhibitions at Tate St Ives, the Victoria and Albert Museum and the National Media Museum, Bradford. His photographs are held in numerous public collections including the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Arts Council Collection and the National Museum of Wales.
Southam was Professor of Photography at the University of Plymouth and later Emeritus Professor of Photography at the University of Exeter. Alongside his photographic practice he is widely respected as a teacher, writer and bookmaker.
About the venue
Kestle Barton is an ancient Cornish farmstead situated above the Helford River. Following an award-winning conservation and conversion project the beautiful old farm buildings have new uses, one of the barns becoming an elegant gallery that opened in 2010. From early April to late October each year, the gallery, garden and wildflower meadow beyond, hosts a programme of three free exhibitions and a number of other events. Surrounding barns and the old farmhouse have been converted into stylish and comfortable holiday accommodation, all profits from which go towards funding the exhibition and event programme. Open 28 March – 31 October 2026: Tuesday – Sunday and Bank Holiday Mondays, 10:30am – 5pm.
Images courtesy of Kestle Barton / Jem Southam © Jem Southam
Ex-London based reader of art and culture. LSE Masters Graduate. Arts and Culture writer since 1995 for Future Publishing, Conde Nast, Wig Magazine and Oyster. Specialist subjects include; media, philosophy, cultural aesthetics, contemporary art and French wine. When not searching for road-worn copies of eighteenth-century travelogues he can be found loitering in the inspirational uplands of art galleries throughout Europe.
