Born 1988, Edinburgh
Graduated 2010
Edinburgh College of Art
“A committed environmental advocate, I work determinedly to educate and engage my audience on the changes occurring in our oceans and bodies of water as a result of global heating, collaborating often with other artists, scientists and educators. In recent years, I have designed interventions and performances with the intention of stimulating discussion: from mass letter writing; to large scale billboard campaign. My project ‘Where Once the Waters’ was first exhibited at Venice Biennale, then in London (RA Summer Exhibition), New York (EcoArtSpace), Sharm-el-Sheikh (Cop 27) and Massachusetts (Umbrella Arts). By composing this recent series principally from typed letters—addressed to hundreds of real individuals around the world—my aim is to allow the audience to be part of these projects and connect with environmental issues on a more personal level.”
Currently working between the UK and Europe, David Cass is an artist and occasional curator. He has exhibited his multi-media artwork in a range of venues and festivals since graduating in 2010: including group showings at Christie’s, The Royal Academy, Royal Scottish Academy, Istanbul Museum of Modern Art, MAXXI Museum, Cop21, 26, 27 & 29; and solo presentations at The Scottish Gallery, British Institute of Florence and Venice Biennale.
Historian Roger Rotmann comments “in order to comprehend the true core of Cass’ work – the tension, the voltage that runs through it – one must observe it in the flesh.” Cass creates three-dimensional paintings and installations using exclusively found materials sourced at flea-markets and antique fairs; though his practice also involves photography, digital media, writing, sculpture, performance and curation. In 2024 he presented his tenth solo exhibition.
Upon graduation from Edinburgh College of Art's School of Drawing & Painting, Cass received a Royal Scottish Academy scholarship to Italy. This event had great influence on his practice and his current projects still make reference to the country. Since then, Cass has made responsible travel a key component of his practice, as well as his exhibition activities. He has participated in projects worldwide, and has artworks in numerous collections, both public and private. These activities have had an increasing focus on sustainability and the environment, with recent projects centered around on the issue of rising sea levels.
Among other awards, Cass has received Winsor & Newton’s top award for his projects in watercolour and the Royal Scottish Academy’s Benno Schotz prize. He’s provided illustrations for books by Mark Haddon and Claudia Roden and worked collaboratively on climate change related projects with artists around the world via the curatorial platform A La Luz.
“Cass has been in thrall to the wonder and beauty of the sea for as long as he can remember and since he has looked with an artist’s eye – to enhance, edit and interpret – he has been struck by the conundrum of the horizon.”
— Guy Peploe
“Quietly radical, Cass’ art incorporates the activity of collecting into the process of making, so that the function of the artist for once utterly displaces the Romantic prototype of the wildman with the bravura brush, and becomes instead a sort of everyman, a Robinson Crusoe scavenging in order to build a new and stripped down life, an aesthetically curious Claude Lévi-Strauss walking through an apparently disordered landscape and finding structure there, an Erasmus, a citizen of the world who can be at home wherever there is water, wood, and weakening memory.”
Prof. Patricia Emison
“David Cass’ rapport with nature and matter is at once deep and yet deliberately distanced: he has established the capacity to observe from not too far away. Cass has situated himself in the ideal position to describe balance: with tact, without over-indulgence.”
Roger Rotmann
“David Cass’s seascape, made from a piece of recycled timber, is not so far from Bill Bollinger’s minimal drawings, but with a richer sense of the object.”
The Scotsman
“With each new project, Cass’ exploration into environmental themes deepens...”
The Scottish Gallery
“You need only look at the work of artists such as David Cass, whose work not only reflects his own deep concerns about the environment but also acts as a collaborative catalyst and has brought together a global community of artists, scientists, geologists and educationalists – to name a few – who are finding ways to engage the public, develop learning, and harness the power of thousands of small changes equalling what will hopefully be a big change”
Dr. Gary Husband
“Upon old metal advertisement signs, pill tins and even re-formed plastic-waste packaging, David Cass paints his seascapes: things of beauty in themselves, but also subtly exploring the Anthropocene. There is something of the miniaturist in Cass’ work, a focussing in on the detail, no matter what the scale, and that scale ranges from the very small to the very large. Cass finds his objects at flea markets, salvage yards, antique fairs...”
The Herald
“David Cass has an innate understanding of matière; a sensitivity to material, it’s texture, tone, pigment, weight and beyond this its context, history and emotional resonance. He works with found objects and by an act of appropriation and minimal intervention he creates works of art with quiet authority...”
Guy Peploe
