David Williams From much earlier works produced as a reaction to the AIDS media frenzy that occurred in the late 80’s up until the present, the driving force in David’s production has been based in an exploration of sensuality and fear. His production reflects a continuing interest in the blurring of the boundaries that separate painting and photography, production and concept working hand in hand. David strives to create work that lushly seduces the viewer but also allows into the viewing experience a contradictory sense of unease. In speaking of elements that inform his practice Williams states, “My work is informed by an interest in the photograph perceived as an accurate record of a specific situation. Photographic images stimulate our recollections of what they represent; in many instances this ‘memory’ is considered truth, though what is revealed to us through the photograph is only partial truth imbued with an interaction between the authors voice and the viewers gaze. My current landscape work is an extension of this belief.” Gardens have frequently played a part in David’s life as way of both grounding himself and creating contrast within an otherwise fairly bleak physical environment. Sharing the garden with a community has also played an important role wherever the said garden may occur. David has been involved with Islington Mill for close to 10 years, within this time he became heavily involved in academia. The job started pulling away at his production time, and became quite consuming. Islington Mill’s garden became a lifeline, not only something to share with Mill residents and visitors but also as a needed tool to maintain his sanity. The garden also began to function as reliable and close source of production material, allowing him to still function as an artist. The work shown here is from a way of working that was developed, produced and exhibited at the Mill titled, The Night Garden. As Elisabeth Seaton noted in the statement for the exhibition;
“The photographic work of David Williams has long engaged with the paradoxical movements of a sensuality relegated to the shadows. Here is splendour that incites and disturbs: a difficult beauty which is there but not-quite seen, not quite felt, not yet. Whether a series of black and white portraits of male friends (Hesitation, Part 1) or the lush colour-saturated images of Mill Garden or Sunflower, Williams’ work calls forth the anxieties that accompany the attractions of the unseen, the forbidden or the fearsome. … Similarly, the series Sunflowers and Mill Garden evoke the arbitrary distinctions of ‘nature, ‘the natural’ and the social; the colours bleed, the images blur, the thin lines barely holding a wild cultivation.”
From, The Night Garden_FLW4042, 2014 163.83x109.22 cm, Giclée Print
David Williams davidw110@mac.com