Interim Show

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David’s work ranges from portraiture to mixed media collage. He exploits textures, materials and fabrics to 3D or accidental effect, always seeking to explore the porous divide between abstraction and representation. He is fascinated by gestural marks and damaged surfaces: the parisian photographer Brassai’s brilliant work on graffiti, for example, is a constant source of ideas, with its demonic archetypes crudely and hurriedly gouged into plaster. His intention is to interrogate the contradictions and inspirations of religious spirituality, political conflict and themes of redemption and renewal.

David is inspired by those artists whose work constitutes a statement against oppression: Max Bechmann, Marlene Dumas, Francis Bacon and their successors. These are practitioners whose stance is often implicit rather than explicit. In pursuit of this, his ambition is to dovetail his fascination for figuration with covert narrative, by disrupting or questioning the space it occupies. As he addresses the conundrum of separate planes on a two dimensional surface, his aim is to involve the viewer with contradictory perspectives, gestural colour and challenging themes.

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www.davidmcgrathart.co.uk