The photos, all taken by Lea himself, cover a variety of subjects, from humorous photographs of his art school days in Brighton, to the thought-provoking portraits of hospital patients, but one thing remains constant - his fascination with the village in Oxfordshire where he grew up. Perhaps his most well known images are those of the village with superimposed public monuments. Lea said: ' The village where I was born has little recorded history, as it has grown slowly from nothing over the past hundred years, upon what was once common land. I wanted to be able to invent a history for it by making photographic versions of 'false' public sculptures which inform its origins, its existence.'

The directness of Lea's images might be bold, but never insolent. They are checked by his sensitivity towards his subject matter and his constant re-positioning in light of experience. To this end, strong autobiographical themes pervade his work - in which family, childhood and loss of innocence are invoked and re-scrutinised, often with a disarming sense of the absurd. For example, the portrait of himself naked with his parents is seen by Andrews as an attempt to say something about his deep relationship with his parents and his love for them. He hadn't been naked with them since his childhood and wanted to re-visit that time of innocence and ease.

Collection Artist(s)