David Austen’s multi-faceted work encompasses painting, drawing, sculpture and film. Engaging with sources as diverse as poetry, literature, ancient myth and 20th century cinema the impetus of his work often derives from his immediate surroundings: a chance encounter or remark, a book cover,
a newspaper headline, a person glimpsed from the window
of a moving bus, or a truck passing the studio window loaded with an incongruous array of objects on its way to the scrap yard next door.
Removed from their original context these fragments assume new meaning within a dreamlike narrative populated by figures, flowers, trees, abstractions, words and signs that are deftly woven across different mediums.
There is comedy in Austen’s work, a delicacy of touch and a delight in the unexpected, but also a dark side illuminated by passion and beauty and love.
David Austen was born in Harlow in 1960 and studied at Maidstone College of Art and the Royal College of Art in London. His work is in many public and private collections in the UK, Europe and the USA. He lives and works in London.
Harold Pinter’s ‘Poem’ is reproduced by kind permission of Lady Antonia Fraser and Enitharmon Press © The Estate of Harold Pinter.
Press Release
the light that fell upon us burned
silence beach
nakeds
night flowers
A solo presentation by David Austen.
For Art Basel Miami Beach 2016 Ingleby presents an immersive installation by London based artist David Austen in painting, sculpture and works on paper. Working across these different mediums Austen’s source material derives from his immediate surroundings: a chance encounter or remark, a book cover, a newspaper headline, a person glimpsed on the street from the window of a moving bus, a truck passing the studio window loaded with an incongruous array of objects on their way to the recycling plant down the road.
The originating impetus for Austen’s work can come from any corner of his everyday world and removed from the original context assume new meaning within a dreamlike and deeply personal narrative populated by figures, flowers, trees, abstractions, words and signs; woven across different mediums. Each of which the artist has said has its own peculiar logic and makes me behave in a certain way in its becoming.
There’s humour in Austen’s work, a light touch and a delight in the unexpected, but also a dark side, illuminated by passion and beauty, love and fear, sex and death.
For Art Basel Miami Beach we will present four new groups of work: the first ‘the light that fell upon us burned’, a new series of thirty abstract collages and a large spiral sculpture, will dominate the back wall of the stand, flanked by a suites of ‘night flowers’ and ‘nakeds’. The final ingredient, a new text painting referencing Picasso’s Monsters as well as refugees on Aegean and Mediterranean shores, proclaims simply SILENCE BEACH.
