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QUANTUM LEAPS: MULTIDIMENSIONAL ABSTRACT ART

14/02/2003

"NESTA is delighted to support an artist whose work is both excellent and timely."

David, who lives and works in London, studied at Birmingham College of Art and the Slade, working in a variety of studios including a disused electricity warehouse, railway arch and derelict school. He has collaborated with Rambert Dance Company and composer Nigel Osborne at the Arnolfini in Bristol, and was given a Pollock-Krasner Award in 1994.

David has worked prolifically over the last five years to produce an innovative body of work ranging from watercolours to large-size wood panels incorporating resin, mirror, metal, glass and found objects alongside traditional canvas and paint. The work is visually and physically complex, referencing science, psychology and the philosophy and physiology of vision, with illusionism, narrative and visual metaphor working in unison with the vocabulary and syntax of gesture painting. David uses a router to draw into densely built-up surfaces, grinding down or cutting through to reveal a trail of hidden marks and layers.

David's three year Fellowship gives him the chance to work with institutions specialising in art, science and perception, collaborating with professionals in physics, chemistry and music in order to push the work and its range of reference in pioneering new directions. Having gained a wider audience for the work, David aims by the final year of his award to be in a position where he can play a significant part in the art world arena of debate.

Venu Dhupa, NESTA Director of Fellowships, said:

"NESTA is delighted to support an artist whose work is both excellent and timely. With many successful contemporary British artists retraining in the basics of their craft in order to fully exploit emerging new technologies, David's experience of blending new materials and a fine art background could place him in an ideal position. His Fellowship has the potential to re-energise David's career, building on the momentum that has already begun."

David went to Germany at 17, working as a bookkeeper, then postman, and painting landscapes and murals in his free time. He returned to the UK to study at Birmingham College of Art, followed by postgraduate studies at the Slade. After a three-year Fellowship at Nottingham University, David showed in numerous solo and mixed exhibitions (including the OEFête Worse than Death) at Factual Nonsense, opened by Joshua Compston in 1992, and named after one of David¹s paintings. In 1994 David won a Pollock-Krasner Award. He has exhibited in London and abroad and his work is in many public and private collections.