Duo Residency: Lewis Davidson and Cristian Fernandez Ocampo

About

We have been consistently impressed and amazed by the quality, integrity and rigour of the artists that apply to our Open Calls, Solo Residency and Radical Residency®. This has been a defining experience — so much so we have decided to award two further artists with Time and Space here in the gallery to work and experiment.The Duo Residency will allow two artists to set up studio for a month, and in keeping with our desire to connect the public with working artists, we will invite booked visitors to view the residents ‘in studio’ in our main gallery. The residents will have space and time in a huge space to explore and collaborate with each other as well as our current Solo Resident Marco Bizzarri, finishing in an exhibition of new works. Further benefit for the artists will be our dedicated outreach and promotion coupled with becoming a part of our wide and supportive network.

The extraordinary times we are living through have shown us the need and necessity to reinforce and strengthen our commitment as an organisation: to put the practicing artist at the heart of our programmes and to bring this experience to the public in exciting and imaginative ways. We are so looking forward to seeing what comes of hosting such a dynamic group of artists in our space — with our first Duo Residents Lewis Davidson (UK) and Cristian Fernandez Ocampo (ARG).

Lewis Davidson (born 1990) is a Mixed Media Artist, based in London. His work addresses themes of value, transience and displacement through Sculpture, Photography and Installation. Lewis holds a BA in Fine Art from Chelsea School of Art and Design and studied MFA Sculpture at Slade School of Fine Art (2017-19), being a recipient of the Felix Slade Scholarship and the Deans Bursary. In 2014-16 he was part of the touring Art@Tell Programme, directed by the University of St. Gallen, CH. He was awarded the Almacantar Studio Award (2019) and placed on the Deans List of Academic Excellence at UCL. Exhibitions include Season of Fire from the Passenger Seat (Raw Labs, London, 2020), Adjacent Directly (Unit 1 Gallery | Workshop, London, 2019), Under Sole and Sky Head (Slade School of Fine Art, London, 2019), Holiday (ARCADE, London, 2018), Catch of the Year (DIENSTGEBÄUDE, Zürich, 2017) and The Observer Effect (GEMAK, The Hague, 2015).

Cristian Fernandez Ocampo (born 1987, Buenos Aires, Argentina) attended the Artist Program at Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, Buenos Aires, Argentina and worked in different projects related to painting, poetry, music performance, films and site-specific installations between Buenos Aires, Los Angeles, New York, Singapore, Johor Bahrú, Kuala Lumpur and Berlin among others. He moved to London in 2018 and enrolled that same year at Slade School of Art UCL for an MFA Painting. He attended the Colart TEFAC Windsor and Newton Residency and participated in several group exhibitions in 2018-20, such as Bio Pix at Steve Turner Gallery, Los Angeles, Pulling Teeth at ASC Gallery, London, London Grads Now at Saatchi Gallery, London, Words to be looked at at Wolfson College, Oxford and Catching Flies at the University of Kent.

About Unit 1 Gallery | Workshop and the Workshop Foundation:

Unit 1 Gallery | Workshop is an exhibition and residency space in London and unique in its approach to bringing artists and their practices to the public. They support a diverse range of emerging and mid-career contemporary artists by providing them with space and time to develop their practice, network within our growing community, be mentored by team members and crucially be introduced to their expansive network of collectors, art educators, professionals and visitors.

Through their residency programmes and exhibitions, they give artists, curators and theorists a platform to present work and share ideas as well as creating an environment for freethinking and exchange.

They have now organised more than 40 exhibitions with over 120 artists and curators, with 10 exhibitions and 23 artists in residence a year, drawing in international audiences and participants, as well as being a local landmark in the community of Kensington and Chelsea and its surrounds.

Unit 1 Gallery | Workshop was founded in 2015 by artist Stacie McCormick in a former builder’s merchant.