from the BLUE
DOG DAYS catalogue
At the first encounter David Shepherd’s work seems forbidding and esoteric: remote from everyday experience and from traditional concepts of sculpture. Displayed in the conventional setting - such as the chic interior of ORIEL gallery - it might seem even uncouth and incongruous, partly because the materials are more commonly associated with building an art gallery rather than with exhibiting in it. By the same token, the work will, no doubt, seem powerful and assertive, and perhaps intellectually daunting.
That statement begs several questions that need to be answered before understanding Shepherd’s work. Also, the tone of uncertainty is there because, at the same time of writing it is not possible to be specific about the precise nature of the finished exhibition. I do not know how it will look - but then neither does the artist himself. He has a general notion about the final shape of his exhibition; there will be two large installation sculptures and aa small selection of photographs. But the eventual appearance of the works will be determined only in the the or four days prior to the opening of the exhibition. THe last deciding factors will depend on the relationship of the materials to the location, and the effect of their conjunction on the sensibilities of the artist. So it is impossible to describe in advance this work of Shepherd’s. It is necessary [ and more rewarding ] to examine his methods of thinking and working. And for this exhibition, the spectator is in an unusual , if not unique, situation: he can compare what the artist had in mind before the completion of the work, with what the final process of creativity has produced.
This process is, never the less in the great tradition of creative art. Indeed Shepherd regards himself as a sculptor in the classic mould; responding to a visual stimuli by producing a three- dimensional work in common materials. But whereas traditional sculpture has a limited repertoire: figures, animals and the like; and a limited range of materials: clay, stone, metal,wood; Shepherd has extended the repertoire and the materials in adventurous ways. He is not alone in this breakthrough, but what is singular about his work is the largely intuitive manner in which he responds to sources and materials that have hitherto been despised by sculptors.
Past masters in art have made us more intensely aware of commonplace objects: Cezanne and apples, Morandi and bottles, or Pop artists and the landscape of advertising. Shepherd’s contribution to this catalogue of subject-matter is the building site and the builder’s yard. From them he gets the same lift that more conservative artists get from sunsets or seascapes. The appeal lies in the ordered stacks of materials and their individual and collective geometry, the narrow and distinctive range of colours, and the close relationship between the separate materials. Not only that, but since the materials are themselves used for structural purposes, it seems logical to use them as a medium with which to construct sculpture.
Shepherd is also fascinated by the antithesis to the ordered world of the builder’s yard - the decline and destruction of that order in the chaos of a demolition site.
There the same materials present in both places, and in the complete contrast in their visual systems it is not difficult to see the parallels in the polarities of art itself. Another visual stimulus, related to these others, comes from the forgotten side of architecture: those stark, functional constructions made from basic materials,serving a humble purpose but so generally ignored: piers, barricades, wooden beamed supports and the like. And when all these ingredients are put together, you have the beginning of Shepherd’s working process. There are certain constants in this work. The first is that each piece of installation sculpture is ephemeral and unique; made especially for a particular exhibition and existing only for the duration of that exhibition. But a qualifying constant is there must always be some sort of continuity, so each new work contains elements from proceeding works - a process that has been going on for the last ten years. A more formal constant is that there is invariably a substructure of geometric units: bricks, slabs, open and closed cubes made of wire, wood, slate, glass, etc. In earlier generations of his work these basic modules have consisted of rectangular plaster blocks, or linear cubes made from barbed wire. In these new pieces, now on view, the modules will be cubes made from wooden slats coated in bitumen - up to 1000 have been made ready for use - some linear and open, some solid with slate sides, some transparent and reflecting with glass; others will be covered with hessian to give a contrasting soft quality. The use of bitumen in his work is relatively new, though it has all the required credentials: it is an authentic builder’s material, it has traditional associations in art [ in the black pigment used by old masters ], and it has inherent aesthetic appeal. Shepherd finds it a “receptive” medium: it has distinctive physical properties, it will accept pigment and other additives, and it has the extra dimension of smell.
These are the uncertainties that the artist intended to include in the final works. Other features were not so certain, and it will be interesting to see if and how they have materialised. He anticipated the probable use of wire - barbed , netted, straight and perhaps dipped in bitumen - to give a linear dimension; the use of oil combined with the bitumen to give a dulled reflective surface. And a figurative element, some life-sized human or quadruped image to relate the spectator to the scale of the work, and to involve the artist at a physical level. Other ingredients were unresolved and depended on a more spontaneous response to the demands of the work as it was being installed. Materials to contrast to the rigidity of the cubes: perhaps cloth or paper totems decorated with pigment; perhaps other materials, undetected as yet, from the builder’s yard; perhaps random finds from the ORIEL location. One strong possibility is from source structures: smaller, preliminary sculptures that he has made, that exist not in their own right but as “quarries” from which to extract details. These then are the main sources of the work which is now on view in the gallery, conditioned finally by the circumstances of the gallery. If the works had been assembled elsewhere they would not look the same as they do here. Ideally, the artist would like to construct them in a builder’s yard, to test his interpretation for it “reciprocal effect” against its source environment. And that is a courageous idea that did not occur to the old masters.
Eric Rowan
