‘In-Retrospect’
DAVID FRYER

Exhibition Dates
6th – 15th June 2025

Daily
12 – 6pm

CLOSED
Monday

Please check insta for any changes

David Fryer

He originally studied BA Textiles at Goldsmiths, graduating in 1988.
The course offered him a thorough grounding in printed, embroidered, and constructed textiles; the emphasis being placed on a personal interpretation of material within a studio environment.

He continued to work within a Fibre-Arts discipline on leaving Goldsmiths, concentrating on the materiality and function of an object as sculptural form. In a series of works which were focused on a notion of the limitation of the function of the object, he reconfigured the form of a mattress. The initial piece consisted of three mattresses, which in turn represented the outline of my own body, a small boy, and a teddy bear. This series of works culminated in the collection of two hundred mattresses. Each mattress was then remade into a single spring equivalent. The single spring mattresses were then reassembled into the shape of the original. The piece simultaneously represented the historical association of pattern design and the residue of the materials interaction with the human body. These works were exhibited nationally in conventional and non-conventional gallery spaces, such as a furniture shop and synagogue respectively.

He has worked collaboratively with other artists, designers, and architects in the collective organisation FAT, on projects such as ‘Adsite’ (London) and ‘Outpost’ (Edinburgh), in both administrative and creative roles. This experience influenced his work to take the direction of working in the public arena. In the Holly St Public Art project, he erected 24 pedestrian street signs that did not show directions to tangible places but instead professed single words relating to a positive outcome for the redevelopment of the housing estate. When asked to create a piece for the England’s Glory exhibition at Whitley Court, a ruined 18th century stately home, he decided to confront the issue of past and present architectural achievement directly in erecting a two thirds scale model of a Barrett house within the ruins of its counterpart. He continued his interest in scale and context in the fabrication of a 20ft stainless steel representation of a rattrap with ‘picnic area’ inscribed on its plate, sited in Burrs Country Park near Manchester. In response to the banking crisis in 2008 he produced severed heads of bankers on spikes erected on London Bridge in the 18th century tradition.

He has collaborated with a student of neurology at UCL on a project concerning long and short-term memory. With the aid of a small video surveillance camera and digital recording equipment, the project analysed how people produce narrative from their daily lives. The footage was edited down to produce a narrative from their daily lives, and the recordings played back to the participants whilst in an MRI scanner.

He was co-curator of two group exhibitions entitled ‘God is Bored of Us’, inviting artists such as Tracey Emin and Sarah Lucas to exhibit in a Stop the War benefit exhibition. He has exhibited in a group (‘The Circle of Dead Grass Where the Circus Used to Be’) and solo show (‘Both Dead’) at the Trolley Gallery, and consequently was commissioned by the photographer Rankin to produce a piece entitled ‘God Thinking When We Are Sleeping’ which was subsequently exhibited at the Baltic Gallery, Newcastle.

He has been producing large-scale drawings that reflect on and reinterpret elements of my previous public enactments such as standing on stepladders on London Bridge and outside St Paul’s Cathedral, entitled ‘A Bridge I Can’t Cross’ and ‘Trying To Get Closer To God’ respectively. In other drawings he contextualised the project ‘Bomb Bag’ a hold all which I produced a multiple of 1000, that utilises the Pan am logo and replaces the name of the airline with the word Bomb in reference to the Lockerbie disaster.

He has been producing multiple of hearts cast it wax with flicker flame bulbs encased inside – looking as though they should melt when plugged into the mains although retain their form. This multiple is a continuation of his use of wax in a previous work where he cast the form of a brain in wax illuminated by flicker flame bulbs (on a standard lamp base).

The drawings he has been developing are from the views from the windows in a flat on the 20th floor of a tower block, looking North, West, and Southwest from just south of the river across from the City between London Bridge and Tower Bridge. These drawings of the cityscapes overlooking the City of London, Parliament and the Elephant and Castle have been adapted with motifs of fire over the City, gun shots over Parliament and a sunburst over the Elephant.  The drawing the aftermath of an explosion over London entitled ‘Yet To Come’ with smoke of the explosion as umbilical cord that leads to a child’s head in the womb looking down over the cityscape looking for a place to exist. More recently he has transposed the motif of these images into the medium of hand and machine embroidery to produce the artwork ‘Double Standards’ manifest as two flags mounted on flag poles with motif of sun blast and fire as representation of creation and destruction, anti-nationalism as standard.

 

SELECTED EXHIBITION

2024 Drop It BCMA Gallery, Berlin
2023 GOING BLIND Finch Gallery, London
2022 KUNST THE CLOWN & FRIENDS Gallery46, London
2020 TEXTILES SHOW 35 Blumen Gallery Krefeld, Germany
2018 KINDRED Open Studio, London
2018 IN OUR DREAMS WE SEE FOREVER Royal Society for Blind Children, Second Artist-Rob Montgomery
2017 SUBSTANCE Mannerhiem Gallery, Paris, France
2016 STILL FUTURE II The Dick Institute Kilmarnock, Scotland
2015 THE BROCKEN HEARTED OF THE WORLD. Galerie Nuke, Paris, France
2015 RIGHT NOW Mission Gallery, Swansea, Wales.
2015 IN THE PARK WITH ED, Display Gallery, London
2014 WE COULD NOT AGREE, QPark, London
2014 STILL FUTURE, Arts Complex, Edinburgh, Scotland
2013 BERMONSEY AND BEYOND, Tanner Street Gallery, London
2013 THINGS OF LIFE, Flowers Gallery, London
2012 NOSTALGIA FOR A FUTURE, Liars of Earth Gallery Thankerton, Scotland
2012 THE FIRE INSIDE US, KK Outlet, London
2010 BLAST THEORY, Residency, Brighton
2009 I AM BY BIRTH, Group Show, Vegas Gallery, London
2009 C.R.A.S.H, Culture, Interventions in the City of London
2008 BOTH DEAD, Trolley Gallery, London
2007 WAR TO END ALL WARS, Dazed Gallery, London
2007 DAZED Vs, BALTIC Gallery, Newcastle/Gateshead
2006 THE CIRCLE OF DEAD GRASS WHERE THE CIRCUS USED TO BE, Trolley Gallery, London
2005 GOD IS BORED OF US II, FMCG Gallery, London
2005 GOD IS BORED OF US, FMCG Gallery, London
2003 HOMAGE TO MARLOW, Public Artwork, Borough, London
2002 EAST OF NO WEST, Private Commission, Homerton, London
2001 OUR FATHER, Installation, The Golden Heart, Spitalfields, London
1999 POST DESIGN, Milan, Italy
1998 SEMI DETACHED, Ikon Gallery Touring Exhibition
1998 PICNIC AREA, Public Artwork, Irwell Sculpture Trail, Bury
1997 ROACH MOTEL, Electric Bra Gallery, San Antonio, USA
1997 YOUNG PARENTS, Castlefield Gallery, Riverside Mews, Manchester
1996 GLASS SHELF, ICA, London
1996 BANK TV, Bank Gallery, London, Manchester
1995 ENGLANDS GLORY, Witley Court, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham
1995 HOLLY STREET PUBLIC ARTS, Dalston, London
1994 AERIAL, Public Arts Project, Edinburgh, Scotland
1993 ADSITE, FAT Arts Project in Bus Stops, London
1993 NEWLYN SITE SPECIFICS, Newlyn Orion Gallery, Cornwall
1993 BRICK LANE OPEN, Synagogue, London
1992 THE PHONE BOX, Art in Telephone Boxes, London & Liverpool
1991 CAN I HAVE ONE TWO, Bridge Gallery, London
1989 CURRENT, SAW Gallery, Swansea, Wales
1989 UNIT G4, Wapping, London

FILM & VIDEO

2006 In collaboration with a neurologist at UCL, investigated the relationship between long and short-term memory, a covert digital surveillance camera and MMR scanner.
2004 FAMILY TREE, Church Hall, Coalisland, N Ireland
1997 GIVING UP, Roc (Dis Count us in) Promo, MTV
1996 SPIN IT OUT, Everything But The Girl (Single) Promo, MTV
1996 FALLS, 16mm Film, BANK TV, London & Liverpool
1995 BOMB BAG, The Dick Awards, ICA, London
1994: ELECTION DAY, The Exploding Cinema, London

EDUCATION

1998 – 2000
MA, Royal College of Art & Design, London

1985 – 1988
BA (Hons), Goldsmiths College of Art, London

We all contain memory of our existence, my artwork is a form of diary of my own life, a visual interpretation of my existence manifest in Sculpture, drawing, embroidered and constructed textiles. When working within a Fibre-Arts discipline concentrating on the materiality and function of an object as sculptural form. I produced a work that focused on the limitation of function in reconfiguring the form of a mattress. The piece consisted of three mattresses, which in turn represented the outline of my own body, a child and a teddy bear. To create a mausoleum of mattress form metaphorical in its functional limitation.

In conjunction I have cast wax brains and hearts containing flicker flame bulbs that look as if they are going to melt yet retain their form. We once believed that our memory was contained in the heart and not the brain as our memories are emotional interpretation of experience, our brain an extension of our physical memory, our hearts reflections of our brains.

I have been producing large-scale drawings that reinterpret elements of my previous public performance such as standing on stepladders outside St Paul’s Cathedral, entitled ‘Trying To Get Closer To God’ In other drawings I have contextualised the project ‘Bomb Bag’ a hold all which I produced a multiple of 1000, that utilises the Pan am logo and replaces the name of the airline with the word Bomb in reference to the Lockerbie disaster of 1988.

I returned to the medium of textiles to reinterpret my drawings as the marks within my drawings suggested embroidery as means of representation. initially producing the work entitled ‘Domestic’ as a dense embroidered representation of a rotary washing line retaining negative space of the fabric. The embroidery of two flags entitled ‘Double Standards’ is taken from the motifs in my drawings of fire and sun to create what look like military flags from a fictitious war, the original drawings becoming a work entitled ‘Birth-Middle bit-Death’. These works together with the wax brain on a standard lamp and wax heart on the end of a fishing rod in conjunction to the mattress mausoleum and a kneeling chair. Grouped together these works enable a reflection on the transient nature of existence from a personal perspective when looking for a universal truth.