Sebastian Lloyd Rees

“The archives and echoes of the urban city hold a significant conversation around my paintings, which focus on the ethical values of social criticism, political statement and the scars of the urban world and its inhabitants… in many ways an academic approach to painting. Over the last year, archives have alternated their position within me.

The state of observing and embodying the urban has become less prevalent in my paintings somehow –– there has become more of a shift towards the archive of me embodying and divining the mood of nature and spirit of things.

To me, it's radiated my paintings into a state where it's an attempt to interpret and understand who we are, and how we find each other in our bodies, in each other and the countries and places inhabited. I'd like to think about it as a state where the unconscious can run free, and painting somehow returns to its origins, a place filled with language and a mystery that can only be expressed in abstracted symbols and lyrical images”

Photo: Chris Kontos

About

Sebastian Lloyd Rees (b. 1986, Stavanger, Norway) is an artist based between Athens and London. With the artist Ali Eisa, he is part of an ongoing collaboration known as Lloyd Corporation.

Since completing his BA at Goldsmiths in 2010, Lloyd Rees’s painting has evolved through several distinct stages; all of which interrogate the ways in which painting can articulate the subjective interactions between the artist and the ever-changing built and natural environments that he has called home.

In his first major series, the Hoarding Works (2014–2018), Lloyd Rees worked with repurposed wooden boards that had been recovered from the hoarding around construction sites in London and New York. In 2020, after moving to Athens, Lloyd Rees developed a more lyrical visual language to reflect his emerging relationship with the Mediterranean, culminating in the Black Paintings (2021–2023) – the subject of a solo exhibition at Vardaxoglou in the Autumn of 2023.

Lloyd Rees continues to chart this relationship with the Stonehouse series (2024–), which includes both paintings and works on paper and takes significant inspiration from the poetry of Shiwu, or Stonehouse, a 13th-century hermit who lived in the mountains of Yushan, China.

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Selected Works

Sebastian Lloyd Rees
Hoarding ( Peckham Rye Lane, 14 August 09:26 GMT - 2014), 2014
industrial paint, pollution, plywood
200 x 520 cm
78 3/4 x 204 3/4 ins
Sebastian Lloyd Rees
Hoarding, (Rathbone Street 12 July 23:12 GMT - 2015), 2015
industrial paint, plywood, pollution
200 x 350 cm (two panels : 200 x 175cm each)
78 3/4 x 137 3/4 ins
Sebastian Lloyd Rees
Hoarding ( Kings Cross St Pancras 27th September 13:15 GMT - 2014)
industrial paint, pollution, plywood, in 5 parts overall
200 x 700 cm
78 3/4 x 275 5/8 ins
Sebastian Lloyd Rees
Hoarding, (94 North Street, 26th September 20:08 GMT - 2016), 2016
industrial paint, pollution, plywood
200 x 122 cm
78 3/4 x 48 ins
Sebastian Lloyd Rees
Short, medium and long-term” (2010 - 2081), 2016
industrial paint, pollution, plywood
200 x 122 cm
78 3/4 x 48 ins
Sebastian Lloyd Rees
Hoarding, (94 North Street, 26th September 20:08 GMT - 2016 / Nine Elms Lane, 17th September 01:20 GMT - 2016), 2016
industrial paint, pollution, plywood
200 x 157 cm
78 3/4 x 61 3/4 ins
Sebastian Lloyd Rees
Hoarding, (Taylor Wimpey - Millbrook Park, 5th September 10.47 GMT - 2017), 2017
Industrial paint, plywood, pollution
200 × 172 cm
78 x 68 ins
Sebastian Lloyd Rees
Hoarding, (Plumtree Ct, 26th January 12:08 GMT - 2018), 2018
industrial paint, pollution, plywood
200 x 173 cm
78 3/4 x 68 1/8 ins
Sebastian Lloyd Rees
Hoarding, (Bekton sewage treatment works, 5th January 12.13 GMT - 2018 / Taylor Wimpey - Millbrook Park, 5th September 10.52 GMT - 2017), 2018
Industrial paint, plywood, pollution
200 x 174 cm
78 x 68 ins
Sebastian Lloyd Rees
Hoarding, (707 - 701, E 241 ST, Bronx NY 10470, 19th September 13:53 EST, 2018), 2018
industrial paint, pollution, plywood
200 x 173 cm
78 3/4 x 68 1/8 ins
Sebastian Lloyd Rees
Hoarding, (24, South Street, Mt Vernon, NY 10550, 10th September 05:03 EST, 2018), 2018
Industrial paint, plywood, pollution
200 × 174 cm
78 3/4 x 68 1/8 ins
Sebastian Lloyd Rees
Hoarding, (116S, Terrace Ave, Mt Vernon, NY 10550, 27th September 18:02 EST, 2018)
Industrial paint, plywood, pollution
200 × 174 cm
78 3/4 x 68 1/8 ins
Sebastian Lloyd Rees
In Beauty It Is Finished, 2021-2023
oil and acrylic on wood
250 x 250 cm
98 3/8 x 98 3/8 ins
Sebastian Lloyd Rees
A Rose in The Spotlight, 2021-2023
oil and acrylic on wood
250 x 250 cm
98 3/8 x 98 3/8 ins
Sebastian Lloyd Rees
Songs Without Words, 2021-2023
oil and acrylic on wood
250 x 250 cm
98 3/8 x 98 3/8 ins

Vardaxoglou Exhibitions

Stonehouse

Solo Exhibition
Sebastian Lloyd Rees
8 February – 22 March 2025
Private view: 8 February, 12–6pm
Vardaxoglou, London

View Exhibition
Eternity and a Day

Solo Exhibition
Sebastian Lloyd Rees
15 November – 16 December 2023
Vardaxoglou, London

View Exhibition