David Cowley


Works
Paintings
Sculptures
Drawings

Exhibitions
Statement
Studio
Contact


9 ILIFFE YARD
CRAMPTON STREET
LONDON SE17 3QA

Statement
These drawings, paintings and sculptures explore my responses to, and engagements with the text of specific pieces of literature and music.

Much has been written on how meaning is not only inferred from sound in music and text in books but that it is also embodied, expressed and seen in objects such as scores, performances and performers, listeners and viewers. However, the role played by the spaces in which these activities unfold is seldom examined or considered to the same degree.

The manner in which the meanings of printed texts can be determined or modified by their reading or performance within differing architectural environments or spaces is of particular interest to me. I work towards artworks which convey the moment or moments when a text, a performance and an environment come together in ink, paint or clay to become a visual metaphor for the experience of reading a text or hearing a piece of music in a specific space.

The viewer will see that my artworks are created by the application or removal of overlapping transparent or opaque marks, surfaces or forms to create multilayered objects. In some, my strategies or improvisations suggest or identify meanings employing representations and relationships between objects and spaces. In others, disparate visual elements, layered and folded towards or away from the viewer, are employed. The tensions between these frontiers of meanings, I believe, have much in common with the manner in which printed texts in literature and music can be constructed, as well as read.