Simon Cardwell
Artist's Statement
Simon Cardwell is a photographic artist best known for dramatic, painterly imagery exploring identity, freedom, and isolation – from botanical still lifes to portraits referencing historical and classical imagery. For Cardwell, the shutter marks a beginning, not an end: each image undergoes painterly manipulation of colour, composition, and form. His practice draws on painting and early photographic traditions as a counterpoint to machine-generated imagery, which calculates pattern and probability but carries no interiority, no memory, no pulse. Cardwell’s images demand the volatility of lived experience filtered through an intuitive process where mood shapes light and shadow as much as technique.
Symbolism runs throughout; plants signify growth and resilience, birds evoke freedom and transcendence, and the human figure carries the weight of memory and myth, each bridging the earthly and the spiritual. Blending reality and imagination, Cardwell’s practice traverses universal themes rooted in mythology and human experience, guiding viewers toward new insight into our shared search for meaning and connection.
Biography
Simon Cardwell (b. 1960s) lives and works in Sydney, Australia (Gadigal land). Born in Adelaide, he studied Visual Art at the University of Adelaide and Photography at the Academie voor Beeldende Kunsten, Netherlands. His practice spans photography, digital media, and collaborative projects. A finalist in several esteemed art prizes, including the Moran Prize (2012), Josephine Ulrick & Win Schubert Photography Award (2012), PX3 Fine Art, Paris (2011), Illustrators Awards (2012, 2013), Hazlehurst Art Prize for Works on Paper (2013), Museum of the Avant-garde Prize, Switzerland (2024, 2025), and the Burwood Art Prize (2025). His works are held in the National Gallery of Australia and the Art Gallery of Western Australia. In 2026, he presented with Curatorial+Co. at the Aotearoa Art Fair.
