Rhys Himsworth: Hereafter

Welsh artist Rhys Hismworth has developed his own visual language through an artistic approach residing between painting, print and the digital.

Rhys Himsworth’s current exhibition Hereafter at BBA Gallery displays a series of work that repurposes obsolete electronic waste as a commentary on mass production, techno-capitalism, and the indirect, circuitous journey of global trade. Gentle protestor and challenger of time and space, Himsworth captures our fast-moving world and ever-changing environments and turns them into romantic artworks in which time stands still. In doing this, he subverts our linear perception of time and defies the pace of mass consumerism; reducing the relentlessness of this fast-paced system into stasis.

For over a decade - long before the rise in mainstream curiosity - the artist has dismantled, chopped, and repurposed redundant electronics, and in his most recent works he aims to return the material back to their land of origin. Mimicking the exhaustive outsourcing process primary to the production of industrial technological products, Himsworth commits to a ritualistic-like pilgrimage, specifically travelling to and sourcing consumer electronics from the land in which their components are originally produced and disposed of. He ships them across the ocean to Europe, crushes and pulverises the individual parts in a shredder and uses the remaining shimmering facets for his romantic, dream-like images. Using his self-developed UV inkjet printer to bring his artworks to life, Himsworth prints the panels with motifs so familiar, that we recognize them immediately without ever having seen them before. To close the cycle of returning the pieces back to their motherland, he chooses stock images representing idealistic views of those particular geographical areas: playful blossoms, calm mountains, and soothingly flowing riverbeds.

For his latest series produced exclusively for his exhibition at BBA Gallery, Himsworth utilises crushed LCD screens, and digitally prints landscapes that sit on the perimeters of global mineral mines. Romantic vistas on top starkly contrast the jagged textural base, made of the literal stuff once excavated there. The series serves as a form of modest environmental activism, preserving the utopian topography of the landscape, whilst the threat of anthropogenic extinction lingers just behind.