Surface was a grouping of artworks I selected in collaboration with Art North Magazine, for the platform Projectroom2020. The presentation featured works by eight artists working upon re-imagined grounds – a celebration of alternative surfaces and processes.

Roger Ackling
David Cass
Roland Fraser
Derrick Guild
Kevin Harman
William Kentridge
Hayley Tompkins
Andrea V Wright

“Here, we have eight artists, including myself, producing work upon re-imagined grounds: walls, functional objects, found fragments, fabrics... In selecting the artists and artworks encountered here, my concerns have related primarily to what I view as ‘dynamics’, or ranges of pace. Not only have I sought to confine my selection to those who use what might be considered non-traditional substrates, but also, to those who employ unconventional processes.

Surface is about contrasts too: Derrick Guild’s tightly considered trompe-l’œil masterpieces are presented in stark contrast to Kevin Harman’s experimental and accident-embracing glassworks, for example. Roland Fraser dismantles and reassembles functional artefacts, while Andrea Wright indexes them, capturing years of evidence – of accretions on brick and wood – onto latex.

Personally, I can’t imagine starting an artwork from a blank slate. To me, it would seem unnatural, for what in life can ever truly be considered blank, and isn’t art so often considered to be a mirror of and for life? As Allan Kaprow suggested, ‘the line between art and life should be kept as fluid, and perhaps indistinct, as possible.’

So much has come before. So much exists out there. So much will, in addition, outlive us. The subtle evidence of lives lived, loved, lost, may so frequently be found inscribed on the very surfaces we have touched and, however lightly, have etched something of ourselves into the everyday objects that live with us throughout our lives.”

— Excerpt from David's introduction text | May 2020