About
Gavin W. Sewell is a Montréal- and New York–based artist whose research-driven practice investigates labour, climate, and collective memory through collage, sculpture, and public art.
His intricate mixed-media works and wall-based sculptures combine drawing, assemblage, and layered materials to create visual essays—dense, accumulative structures that explore time, history, and the psychological residue of social systems. Working across scales from intimate studio works to large-scale public interventions, Sewell’s practice engages the tension between interior experience and shared public reality.
Sewell has exhibited extensively across the United States and Canada, with solo exhibitions in New York, Washington, D.C., and California. His recent solo exhibition Embracing the Storm at Zenith Gallery examined engagement and anxiety in periods of social instability. He has completed more than sixty commissioned projects for private collectors, organizations, and public institutions, including large-scale public artworks for the Washington, D.C. public school system.
His work has been supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, the Durst Organization, Chashama, the New York Foundation for the Arts, Kasini House, and Kolaj Magazine. Sewell studied at the Art Students League of New York with artists including Federico Solmi, Jonathan Talbot, and Louise Bourgeois, and at Colby College and St. John’s College in Annapolis. After experiencing vision loss due to pediatric glaucoma, Sewell developed an approach to image-making that emphasizes tactile layering and material accumulation.
Sewell has exhibited extensively across the United States and Canada, with solo exhibitions in New York, Washington, D.C., and California. His recent solo exhibition Embracing the Storm at Zenith Gallery examined engagement and anxiety in periods of social instability. He has completed more than sixty commissioned projects for private collectors, organizations, and public institutions, including large-scale public artworks for the Washington, D.C. public school system.
His work has been supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, the Durst Organization, Chashama, the New York Foundation for the Arts, Kasini House, and Kolaj Magazine. Sewell studied at the Art Students League of New York with artists including Federico Solmi, Jonathan Talbot, and Louise Bourgeois, and at Colby College and St. John’s College in Annapolis. After experiencing vision loss due to pediatric glaucoma, Sewell developed an approach to image-making that emphasizes tactile layering and material accumulation.
Selected Institutional Support
