Bio
Lewis Heriz is a cross-disciplinary artist and filmmaker from Suffolk, UK, now based in Shropshire.
He comes to his animation practice from a background first in music and theatre, then grassroots music promotion. From the latter grew a decade-or-so-long stint in graphic art and illustration, with a heavy weighting on record covers ↣ and poster design for labels such as Soundway, Sofrito, Strut, and Now-Again/Stones Throw, and artists such as the Sun Ra Arkestra. The ‘manufactured synaesthesia’ approach he applied to music visuals led him to see animation – with its fusion of sound and image through time – as a natural progression, and spent his MA at the RCA investigating an expanded approach to the form.
Statement
I have come to see animation as an integrated system for thinking and making, rather than a single practice or product. The term 'animation' expands and contracts in context; sometimes specifically a repetitive mode of creating 'time-based art', in others an all-pervasive ecosystem of audiovisual techniques and technologies that our entire society engages with on a daily basis.
My current direction draws as much from artist's moving image as it does from more traditional notions of animation, and my interest in non-hierarchical collaboration is partly in response to the negative experience of individual competition associated with freelance labour.
My focus on physical, material and tactile process intensified during the sensorially-deprived period of lockdown in 2020. To hold materiality as being central to one’s day in a hyperdigital era is to appreciate the centrality of embodied cognition in being human: to recognise the temporal nature of neural structures whose organising principle is grounded in the relationship between the Here and the Now.
Agency is key to being an artist, just as it is key to being a human. My MA research has encompassed questions of loss of agency within the (current) digital economy, and has brought me to a belief that a rejection of pervasive trends of surveillance, extraction and behavioural manipulation in Big Tech is essential to maintaining a healthy relationship with the world; one that’s rooted in physics, material properties, embodied cognition, relativity, multi-sensory experience and genuine sustainability.
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Jan 2023: 2022 was a period of transition out of a period of transition, having spent the year moving house and studio twice. Now finally settled in my new Shropshire studio, I am working on multiple animation projects that should begin to materialise in 2023. I'm not currently taking on freelance commission work, although I am interested to hear of any collaborations that may feel right, and always happy to chat with anyone wanting to discuss working together.
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE AND COMMERCIAL WORK
Select Clients and Collaborators:
Story Syndicate, PSHE Association, San Francisco Jazz Festival, Curzon/Artificial Eye, Bloomsbury, Open City Documentary Festival, Simon & Schuster, Serpent’s Tail, Dartmouth Films, Canongate Books, Soundway Records, Sofrito, Howling Hops, Stones Throw & Now-Again Records, Red Bull Music Academy, Strut Records, Analog Africa, The Heritage Arts Company
2023
Visiting Lecturer ▻ Informed Practice, BA Animation, London College of Communication
Animator ▻ The End of the World (dir. Ali Aschman)
2022
Animator ▻ STOLEN YOUTH: Inside the Cult at Sarah Lawrence (dir. Zachary Heinzerling)
Animator ▻ Miles Davis, What's Love Got To Do With It music video (Dir. Irina Rubina)
Visiting Lecturer ▻ MA Animation, Royal College of Art
Visiting Lecturer ▻ Handmade Film, Cambridge School of Visual and Performing Arts
Director & Animator ▻ Don Leisure feat. Gruff Rhys, Neon Drizzle (Hotel Shaboo) (First Word Records)
2021-Present
Art Director & Designer ▻ Fully Human (PSHE Association)
2010-Present
Graphic Artist ▻ Soundway Records
Graphic Artist ▻ Strut Records
2008-Present
Art Director & Graphic Artist ▻ Sofrito
Animator ▻ Ice Merchants (Dir. João Gonzalez)
Animator ▻ The Dog With Wings (7) (Dir. Sanjana Chandrasekhar)
Animator (Clean-up/Inbetween) ▻ Eating in the Dark (Dir. Inari Sirola)
Musician (Trombone) ▻ Help Me It's Dark In Here (Dir. James Cheetham)
Art Director/Graphic Artist ▻ SFJAZZ Summer Sessions, San Francisco Jazz Festival (postponed to 2022 due to Covid19)
2021
Director & Animator ▻ Promotional campaign for the publication of The Octopus Man by Jasper Gibson
2020
Graphic Artist ▻ Hundred House Coffee print collaboration
2018
Graphic Artist ▻ Agnes Varda: Gleaning Truths season campaign (Curzon Cinemas/Artificial Eye)
2009-2011
Art Director/Graphic Artist ▻ Now-Again/Stones Throw
EXHIBITED & FEATURED
2022
Official Selection, Annecy International Animation Festival, So Long (We Dreamt of This), Graduation Films Programme 1
Official Selection, Aesthetica Short Film Festival, So Long (We Dreamt of This), Artists' Film Programme 2
Official Selection, EFEA - Experimental Film East Anglia, So Long (We Dreamt of This)
2021
Royal College of Art Degree Show and screening event at the BFI Southbank, So Long (We Dreamt of This)
2020
Centre Pompidou <<Mon Oeil>>, Improv 1
2019
Vimeo Staff Pick, Improv 1
2018
Hot Sun, Late Sun: Modernism Untamed, Fondation Vincent Van Gogh, Arles
Vinyl Factory (2) - Sun Ra Arkestra covers
2016
Rough Trade Solo Show, Nottingham
2015
AWARDS/SCHOLARSHIPS
2023
PLANTING, Animate Projects funded artist programme, Derby
2022
Awards for BEST EXPERIMENTAL SHORT and EXPERIMENTAL VISUAL APPROACH, EFEA - Experimental Film East Anglia
2021
MA Scholarship Grant, Leverhulme Charity Trades Trust (supporting attendance at RCA Animation programme)
2003
First Class (Hons) BA English Studies, University of Nottingham
EDUCATION
2019-2021
MA Animation ▻ Royal College of Art, London, UK
Dissertation: 'An Image, Moved: Time-Pressure, Performed Transcription and The Human in Handmade Film'
2019
Gateway Into Industry ▻ Aardman Academy
2003
BA English Studies ▻ University of Nottingham, UK
© Lewis Heriz 2023