On Friday 8th October Block 336 hosted an in-conversation event, between London-based writer, curator and organiser Eliel Jones and Dale Lewis. The event gave audiences the opportunity to eavesdrop on a casual conversation between the artist and curator and to get up close and personal with Lewis’ latest series of paintings.

Dale Lewis is a London based artist. His paintings inherit the scale, compositional and narrative structures of canonical art historical painting – renaissance and religious scenes in particular – with devices of metamorphosis, transcendence, spirituality and sexuality serving as mainstays. These traditions are as much inverted as they are co-opted to suit Lewis’ ends: whilst monumental scale was conventionally reserved for fittingly worthy themes, Lewis focuses on what he observes around him: social immobility, consumerist excess, binge drinking culture, gang violence, bad diet, class divides, family life and 9-5 jobs.

Eliel Jones is a writer, curator and organiser based in London. He has curated projects in the UK and internationally, including in Jordan, Poland, and the United States. He has written essays for various artists’ catalogs and publications, as well as reviews and features on contemporary art and performance for Artforum, Frieze, The Guardian, Flash Art, Mousse, Spike Art Quarterly, x-tra and MAP Magazine. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he delivered monthly commissioned projects across the world through Queer Correspondence, a mail-art initiative.