14 St George Street – Elwes

14 St George Street – Elwes

As part of our ongoing art programme for 14 St George Street in Mayfair, we are delighted to be showcasing the work of contemporary painter, Luke Elwes.

Elwes (b.1961) currently lives and works in London. His early years were spent in Iran, where the light and space of the desert were a formative influence. He studied at Bristol University (BA History) and Camberwell School of Art between 1979 and 1985, and at Birkbeck, London University (MA Art History & Theory, 2007).

While working at Christies he began to travel and write, and after meeting Bruce Chatwin in 1987 he went to the central Australian desert to explore the landscape and its use in aboriginal storytelling and artforms. Since then he has continued to travel extensively, discovering and revisiting remote locations in India, Asia and North Africa.

“The idea of a journey is central to my painting, both its physical and temporal unfolding and its recollection in memory. The surfaces recall maps, tracing the marks of history and the fragile signs of belief, and moving between what is revealed and concealed of these often empty and distant terrains. Rooted in the particular, the images also probe an interior space.”