Ben Elwes’ practice uses photography and mixed media with an emphasis on exhibitions, publications and artwork production. The work follows a documentary tradition and is motivated by humanistic values. He responds to collective experience often addressing the familiar and mundane. He will revisit locations to develop work, sometimes over an extended period. He creates a visual poetry of vignettes reflecting our time.
His work is predominantly concerned with consumer culture and its coexistence with mass media and advertising, a theme he revisits by default. He is preoccupied with the dominant technologies that compete for our attention daily and by which we are inadvertently conditioned as they impact our psychology and values; whether in the public or private realm, purchasing, voting or just being entertained. Our habits and routines raise the question of free will and he explores how we act within those ever-changing environments. Elwes’ work can be seen as satirical as he invites the viewer, through these captured moments, to question the artifice about them.
Elwes’ work has been exhibited at national and international venues including the National Portrait Gallery and The Photographers’ Gallery in London, Frölunda Kulturhaus in Göthenburg Sweden and with Fetart in Arles and Paris. He presently divides his time between Europe and México. In México his work has been exhibited in government institutions and private galleries including Centro Cultural Manuel Gómez Morín Santiago de Querétaro and Fifi Projects, México City.