Tom Willis is a photographic artist working in London and around the South of England. He creates social documentary work that currently centres around unseen manifestations of Britishness, through the use of considered portraiture, contemporary landscape and still life imagery. Willis gets drawn to the communities he captures through a desire for the exploration of people and places that seem to go unnoticed, and the spaces they occupy within wider British culture - spanning from hobby clubs held in scout halls, to grassroots disability football, to the independent professional wrestling scene. He aims to explore and document the tangible commonalities that draw people together, and the abstract emotional connections that they form to solidify themselves as a group. In a post-Brexit Britain that often feels more divided by the day, Willis aims to shine a light on these spaces and communities existing in Britain as positive examples of diversity of cultures, creativity and togetherness. These overarching motives also provide a framework for more direct and specific subtexts to manifest within individual bodies of work. This allows for an expansive exploration into the vast intricacies of modern British culture throughout his practice, with investigations into notions of identity, masculinity, sexuality, pride, the unseen, gentrification and heritage all present in various forms in recent series.
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