LIMNOREIA by Louise Tiplady

“Simon Lewty & The Nereids” is a collaboration between The Lettering Arts Trust and Art First. The exhibition features major works by Simon Lewty, and is accompanied by individual depictions of the mythical Nereids created by 26 artists represented by the Lettering Arts Trust. 

Simon Lewty’s mastery of the calligraphic, the palimpsest, graffiti and scripts of many kinds, is matched by his generation of poetic content. His hand-written texts combine with figurative imagery to create a dream like reality. In recent years, a group of drawings have emerged, inspired by his love of Greek mythology.  

The Nereids, in particular, captured Lewty’s imagination. They are known as the fifty benign sea goddesses which symbolised everything that is beautiful and kind about the sea. “Simon Lewty & The Nereids” is a collaboration between The Lettering Arts Trust and Art First. The exhibition features major works by Simon Lewty, and is accompanied by individual depictions of the mythical Nereids created by 26 artists represented by the Lettering Arts Trust. 

Sometimes Lewty coats tissue paper in white gesso onto which he applies softly inked lettering. The engaging but illegible lettering he uses in some of his work is known as tachygraphy, or Shelton’s shorthand - used in the 17th Century by civil servants, in particular by Samuel Pepys for his diaries, and mastered by Lewty over a period of years. These elegant mysterious marks serve as a secret language, in this case - ‘a kind of wordless sea-language’ which he developed in 2019 as an evocation of the voices of the Nereids, ‘who may cry in the murmurs of the waves’.  

Simon Lewty & The Nereids runs from 15th May to 4th July 2021.