Brynley Odu Davies. Artist Portraits.

About

The show will feature a selection of Brynley’s never-before-exhibited artist studio portraits taken between 2020 and 2023. Featuring over 200 artists, the overall project is a testament to both Brynley's unwavering commitment to platforming young creatives, and the talent of the artist subjects who collectively form the UK’s incredible emerging art scene.

The project itself was born almost by accident. In 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic put a sudden stop to Brynley’s burgeoning career as a music photographer, he inadvertently found his calling. With little else to do, he began taking studio portraits of local South London based artists who he befriended with during his daily lockdown walks.

Brynley posted the first few images on Instagram, and was inundated with requests from other artists - suddenly, he realised he had hit on something rather magical and a monumental new project was born. Shooting at least five times a week and travelling across the entire UK, to date Brynley has photographed over 200 contemporary artists in their studios. The resultant images exist as a remarkable archive, presenting a panoptic, nationwide view of the creatives who are shaping the UK’s emerging art world, and will come to define its future.

Despite featuring a number of newly-established global talents, Brynley’s project aims to platform all young artists equally. His intent was not to chase the most successful or noteworthy artists, but instead to create a truly diverse, widespread and reflective record of the many individuals who make up the UK’s emerging art scene. Looking beyond capital cities and well-known art schools, Brynley let the project take him everywhere; from the shores of southern England up to the Scottish coast, across to Wales and on a ferry to Northern Ireland. His genuine approach and kind nature, meanwhile, imbues the final images with warmth and openness - each artist willingly welcomes the viewer into their sacred studio space. For Brynley, one of the most important aspects of the project has been the relationships he has made along the way, with many of the subjects now counting among his best friends.

Like Nat Finkelstein’s images of Andy Warhol’s Factory or David Bailey’s documentation of 60s London, Brynley’s images collectively form a unique and truly exceptional archive, immortalising the UK’s vibrant emerging art scene in the 2020s and featuring the household names of the future. STUDIO WEST is delighted to present this ambitious project for the first time, celebrating Brynley’s enormous undertaking and the exceptional talent of the remarkable featured artists.