CV
Wimbledon College of Art, University of the Arts London 2007 - 2010
Work exhibited:
The Charleston Trust "Quentin Follies", 2006
Wimbledon Group Exhibition, "Feeding a little life", 2008
Group Show at Deutche Postbank,
Group Show, Cobden Club, Notting Hill, London June 2010
Group Show, HangArt 7, Salzburg, Austria October 2010
http://www.hangar-7.com/en/art/hangart-7-edition-16-england
The Other Art Fair, Bargehouse, Oxo Tower Wharf, London November 2011
http://www.theotherartfair.com/projects/david-stockley/
Group Show, "The Chaos of Memories", Tabernacle Gallery, January 2012
Group Show, Debut Contemporary Gallery, London March 2012
Shortlisted National Open Art Competition September 2012
Work in the collections of Landmark PLC, Dietrich Mateschitz
Commentary in Catalogue for "HangArt 7" exhibition 2010 on David Stockley's paintings:
If it were not for the St Pancras in brackets next to the title, Untitled, we would ask ourselves where we had seen or experienced this inhospitable place ourselves. But St Pancras explains that there is obviously an occasion or a reference that has to do with the recently refurbishedLondoninternational train terminus. But the spaces that Stockley creates resemble numerous versions of these "un-places" or "non-places" as the French anthropologist Marc Augé calls them, and he provides an important reference point for the artist.
In 2006 in the online magazine Telepolis, Jörg Auf dem Hövel, who also refers to Augé and to the somewhat earlier Georg Simmel, uses the example of the airport to describe these "non-places", where one cannot and does not want to linger and which have created "an antiseptic culture of monotony" - only constructed in order to be left again. And further: "Even if the shell plays with futuristic forms, the content is always the same: check-in counter, fast-food and perfumery chains, dull boarding zones with rows of seats. That is supposed to be like that, the ideal airport is organised around consistent guidance systems and unchanging offers, because everything is intended to fulfil the unchanging expectation of the visitor: I want to get out of here. Anything of more significance there is simply dysfunctional. Everyone is always on the way to a place that is more important than the present one. Airports are places of transit and to wait is to lose."
A further characteristic of this public space is the disappearance of the individual, the lack of confrontation and communication with others. David Stockley takes us to these places: to departure lounges, to buses, to nameless public squares and to railway station halls. The last of these, the pictures from this year, 2010, radiate an almost destructive atmosphere: people stand in vast, apparently still functional, usable spaces in which, however, the ground is covered with rubble and gravel. The few people who are staying here are not talking to one another, are not facing each other; each is looking in a different direction. Here and there powerful colours stand out in predominantly brown, grey and blue tones: above all green - the green of a pullover, a plant or a dress. Green as a last rebellion of nature and its light (in some flashing white places). Even if the colour palette is broader here and there, the predominant mood is of exhaustion, forlornness and loneliness.
David Stockley knows all these places of waiting, bridging and moving on very well. Since his early childhood he has been much travelled. His professional activity, which demanded being frequently on the move, has inscribed these experiences more deeply in his body and soul. Looking at the pictures, a great song, one I prefer in the cover version by Gary Jules rather than the 1982 original by Tears for Fears, suddenly comes to mind. Among other things it says: "All around me are familiar faces / Worn out places, worn out faces / Bright and early for their daily races/ Going nowhere, going nowhere." One could perhaps also call this series of pictures after this song: Mad World.
Artist Statement
The sources of my paintings are photographs that I have taken of individuals in public spaces - generally places of transit. The photographs are taken quickly and I make no attempt to resolve any formal qualities at this stage. I prefer to leave such questions open so that I can address them as I manipulate this raw material. I also collect images (both found and originated by me) of dilapidation, debris and detritus.
The images are mediated through processes of collage (figures and other elements may be moved, abstracted and introduced from the same or other photographs). Other mediation processes involve painting over the images, doing sketches of them that serve as secondary sources, as well as layering and scumbling paint in the final work in order to produce visual uncertainties which may themselves be analogous to psychological or ontological ambiguities.
The outcomes may produce juxtapositions that were never present - I am interested by the way that such juxtapositions may question the nature of relationships between individuals, the permanence of physical structures around us and assumptions about the environmental status quo. My finished work may retain elements of the construction process used. These marks, which relate to the processes of collage and mediation through drawing, may be read as metaphors for the way that what seems to be represented might well have been otherwise. Contemporary artists I find relevant to my practice include Adrian Ghenie, Karin Mamma Andersson, Michael Borremans and Hannah Starkey.
Contact
Email: david_stockley@btinternet.com