David Price: Work

Nearly, solo exhibition, 2029.

It's a long story, but I have begun to catalogue the many fictional or imagined artworks that occur throughout The History of Writing (a series of iPhone notes written immediately after the birth of my second son). I kept writing things like 'If I was an artist I would make...' This leaflet accompanies the first such piece of documentation.

Halab, gouache on card... one of a long, long series of pictures depicting small pieces of soap that have become too small to still be useful.

This example was included in the group show Petit Salon, curated by Ebba de Faire, at Sotheby's auction house in Stockholm.

All the Living Friends, TACA, Palma de Mallorca, 2022. Group exhibition curated by Cristina Ramos.

A few works on paper of mine were included in an open-ended and performative exhibition assembled by Cristina Ramos as a means of recording friendships and significant relationships (I was honoured to be included).

I made a bad decision, however: instead of cheaply travelling to Mallorca and having a wonderful time I spent almost as much money sending the work by express delivery, and it didn't arrive on time. It was quite stressful, but in the end I wrote a letter to be printed out and distributed at the exhibition, explaining the situation and giving the tracking number for the parcel so that viewers at the opening evening could follow its progress.

The parcel itself contained a selection of work, a sort of portfolio of potential exhibition material. This itself was an open-ended gift to Cristina, sent with the implicit wish that she choose a couple of works for the show (they arrived a few days after the opening; exhibition shots by Lúa Oliver), a few to have at home, a few to show in the future - a portfolio for a curator to live with.

Deep Cover Point, solo exhibition at The Mothership, Antwerp, October 2021. 

The publication for the exhibition can be viewed here (printable copy, A3, double-sided, folds together to form a booklet). With a new text by Koen Sels. Designed by Patrick Lacey/Åbäke, printed at Mr Copy, Antwerp. 

There is a mass of work I’ve been making... but most of it is destined for an exhibition, Deep Cover Point, that this odd year has delayed. So it can’t quite be posted for the record, or for posterity, as it should have been. Time and pictures pass by at a glance. 

David’s “Hand” picture, 1985 - 2020

Slowly, whilst other things are going on (and instead of working on other things) I have been drafting a comic: La Clairière - les aventures de Amun-re. Amun-re, or specifically a small bronze sculpture of Amun-re in the Brooklyn Museum’s egyptological collections, and the ‘fetish’ from Hergé’s The Broken Ear, casually escape from their museological confinement and investigate some peculiar goings on. These goings on, in part, are simply moments at which works of mine have intervened in small details of art history. They are also ways of thinking about the decolonisation of the museum, cultural tourism and the corrupt clarity of the ligne claire - they sketch instead un pli clair.

Clearing The Table

A talk I gave at the Galleri Cora Hillebrand in Gothenburg, as part of the Skymningskonst event. I spoke whilst the video played silently. This version adds my words as a soundtrack, along with the occasional sounds present in the various films and videos ‘shown’ during my own. 

SAFE AND SOUND/SANE AND SOFT, documentation by Samy Langeraert...

A new video work by Andy Roche and I...: 

Progressive Water/The Visitation (Gabriel), 6m38s

Shown as part of Other Ways of Watching Together, Neverland Cinema, MAMA, Rotterdam.

Andy: Looking at the end of 2019 with a ‘wait and see’ attitude of gratitude. Rising sea levels, late-onset adulthood, love itself growing more complicated and unwieldy by the year - I came from Chicago US to Godalming UK to visit David Price et al. Instead of giving any answers to my questions, he just showed me around his quaint village which had recently been flooded by the Anthropocene. Genesis founder Peter Gabriel attended the elite school on the high ground above the town. David is a fan and told me about Gabriel’s song Here Comes the Flood which apparently imagines how the world would be if everyone was suddenly telepathic. I hope that’s on the other side of history. I’d like to see more of my friends. In your eyes…? There’s a tear in your beer.

David: Hanging out, looking, watching, making together… two friends, who always make a piece of work when they see each other, have made another piece of work. My son Jack, who appears in the video, loves Peter Gabriel, and Peter Gabriel went to school here in the little English town where I grew up, and where Andy came to visit for the first time in 15 or so years. We thought about his song Here Comes the Flood, and all our journeys down here from London were affected by unusual rainfalls, landslides and flooding. The river that runs through the town is higher and faster flowing than I’ve ever seen it. My parents live up on the same high ground where the school is. Andy and I took the words of the song down into the valley and commended the words to the fast flowing water. We toasted the meeting with a glass of water, ignoring our whiskeys. The water of life, but too much water. Our films always have our names in them. So?

it’s in this room right now, letter-pressed business card produced by Norrbacka Tryckeri for LH. 

As part of the exhibition Att ta saken i egna händer (Taking matters into your own hands) at Mint, Stockholm, we organised a launch event for the book Uses of Leisure. Along with a new text, Use-Value of Leisure (which became an additional chapter, an addendum to the book), Ben Cain installed a new set of works: Training – Small Semi-Skilled Tasks: Units of Exchange, Labour of Trying, Useful and Non-Useful Goods, Caring for Cast-Offs. 

The launch event was produced with the generous support of Iaspis. 

Wimper, a book on the work of Alex Farrar. Published by Mulberry Tree Press to coincide with the exhibition FALTERING, LIGHT UNDER TWO SCREW HOLES… at SE8 Gallery. Texts by myself and the curators, Nicolas de Oliveira and Nicola Oxley. Kindly supported by The Embassy of the Netherlands. Graphic design by Studio Hendriksen. 

LH... An office: for editing and curation, inviting and hosting, and for producing images, texts and documents. A collaboration between Patrick Lacey and I. 

Uses of Leisure, a monograph on the work of Ben Cain edited and designed by Åbäke and I, published by Wiels. Available for purchase online.