From the Floor Level Creation review
David Shepherd‘s exhibition at the Ikon Gallery, Birmingham is his first
for three years. The reasons are not difficult to discover.
His work, by its nature, precludes the possibility of exhibiting with other artists; it requires a good deal of space and time for setting up, and a fair degree of tolerance from the management of the gallery.
Although it is described as ‘ sculpture ’ in the publicity for the
exhibition. this is merely a term of convenience, and there are good reasons
for seeing it as closer to painting. What is certain is that, before anything
else, it is likely to strike most of the visitors to the Ikon as bizarre.
Chapter studio
Two large works make up the exhibition. Each is constructed at floor level,
and consists of a basic grid of slabs [ plaster in one case, slate in the other
], over which layers of powdered pigment have been poured. In this pigment tracks
are drawn with sticks and blocks of wood, imprints are made, and hieroglyphs
suggestive of obscure civilisations are inscribed. The effect is so remote from
the expectations produced by the word ‘sculpture ’ as to present a barrier to the real beauties of the works. This is a pity for there are no catches in Mr Shepherd’s work - it is ‘about ’ nothing beyond the way it appears to the spectator, although the artist offers ‘clues ’ in
analogies with ancient ruins and archaeology.
‘I like my work to be seen in the way an adventurer who is hacking his way through the jungle might suddenly come across a ruined city, and stand there awe-struck’,
he told me. This analogy is particularly strong in the piece downstairs, where
the suggestion of broken pavements and traces of activities that appear to have
been abandoned in disorder. But these analogies are not to be taken too literally
- these are independent works not stage sets. For Mr Shepherd - although this
may not necessarily concern the spectator - works themselves are inextricably
bound up with the process by which he makes them. His liking for working at floor
level
Ikon gallery - upper floor
owes a good deal to the example of Jackson Pollock in as once he has done a piece on the floor it stays there; if he wants a piece to go on the wall he makes it on the wall.
He describes the way in which he started the piece in the upper gallery: ‘ I began with a layer of plater and pigment, and threw torn paper all over it Then I poured on an other colour and removed the paper leaving prints ’ Later
the outlines of these prints were drawn on the surface, and the paper itself
was incorporated around the edges so the work was constantly being fed with its
own material. Despite the surface strangeness of the resulting work, this interest
in the relationship between the work of art and the way in which it is produced
is a familiar concern of artists in this century. Mr Shepherd is ‘ very conscious of art history ’ and apart from Pollock he lists Picasso’s
paper sculpture, David Smith and Carl Andre as particularly important to him.
Ikon gallery - ground floor
It is also true that he works with very traditional materials - plaster, pigment, water,
paper, charcoal and wood and although he uses them in very untraditional ways, he is conscious of a need to respect their individual qualities. The nature of his work means that each piece lasts only as long as the exhibition it is prepared for and is quite unsaleable [ in the United States he suggests gallery proprietors might act like boxing promoters, charging the public to see him at work ]. Like the majority of artists he is dependent on teaching [ at Cardiff College of Art ] for a living.
He sees his work as meaningful but in many ways unremarkable activity which
does not necessarily need to be ruthlessly assessed as to its significance: “ It’s only critics who divide artists into great artists and poor artists, he said. “ I
have a lot of respect for the old lady who paints water colours of places
she has visited, because this is a real response to real experience, where
much contemporary art derives only from education.
The four days he spent setting up his Ikon show have proved particularly
instructive. “ This is the best studio space I’ve ever had ”, he said. I’ve been through as many stages in four days as I would normally go through in two months. It’s
given these pieces a history in the gallery.
Terry Grimley
