For thirty years Bill Wyman was the bass player of the most famous rock band in the world, the Rolling Stones. Lesser known is the fact that he has been photographing everything from his band mates, to other celebrities, to landscapes and nature. Though they are artfully composed with tremendous attention to detail, colour and composition, Wyman never considered his own works "art" though they indisputably are. A small part of this archive has been published in 5 successful books which he has released since 1990, and there have been a few exhibitions in America, Holland, Monaco and the South of France, where Bill has maintained a residence since the 70's, but the photographs have never before been exhibited in London - until this Autumn.
In this exhibition of prints, most on display will be in colour and most have never been exhibited before. With his unparalleled access, the portrait photos form a perfect counterpoint to the mass imagery, which has spread throughout the world's magazines over the decades. The photos not only chart the years during Wyman's tenure with the Stones, but also feature friends from the music industry, where his subjects are captured in rare, relaxed and unguarded moments.
Like the undiscovered work of an outsider artist toiling away for decades, it is as if a fully matured, massive body of work has appeared untouched, unseen and from nowhere. It is a truly profound and insightful record of the past 45 years encompassing everything from celebrities to landscapes and the natural world.
'I am extremely pleased to have kept my photographs since I started taking them in the mid-1960's.' Wyman says. 'And I'm very proud that a selection of these will finally be exhibited in London, where I was born and brought up.'
Accompanying the long-awaited London exhibition there will be a publication with text by Hans Ulrich Obrist, world-renowned Director of the Serpentine Gallery Museum in London. In addition to a boxed set of 40 prints of early Rolling Stones material from the 1960s-80s, there will be an assortment of large format photographs depicting landscapes, nature, and personalities from music, art and film.
