Exhibition
David Spiller FOREVER YOUNG - Beaux Arts (London)
David Spiller (b 1942) is the ‘Peter Pan’ of today’s post-Pop art scene. Beginning his career in the 1960s, he occupies a unique position in the contemporary art world: he belongs to the Pop tradition but is not a Pop artist. He is more than that. His work draws on the iconography and sounds of popular culture – on comics, TV cartoons, art history and lyrics by the greats of 20th-century song-writing – but also on graffiti, which he uses to subvert his pristine canvases with scribbled text and images to create a dialogue with the viewer that anchors the work firmly in the present. ‘It’s as though I make my own wall,’ says Spiller, ‘and it’s one you can carry about and hang in your sitting-room.’
His eclecticism might mark him out as a post-modernist but there’s no irony intended here. David Spiller is far too genuine an artist and man for that: ‘I use all sorts of popular motifs in my work. They’re not there for the sheer hell of it; everything has a meaning to me.’ And, he hopes, for his viewers.
These vibrant paintings develop ideas from past work but also present new challenges; some are purely abstract – a new development – while others give prominence to favourite motifs such as his dots and squiggles. Still, the emphasis here is on fun, serious fun, and on activating the work, the colours, the forms, so that each painting really lives.
‘Art school was a cacophony of sounds,’ says Spiller. ‘Most students were musicians and together we’d sing the blues. They played music and I painted. My art is still a performance, drawing on inspiration from music, books, films as well as my own memories, breaking moulds and challenging fears, so that my pictures are always about today.’
David’s studio is in South East London, a stone’s throw from where he sold flowers as a boy. Music fills the space, which is lined with life-size canvases, drawings and stencils, while the floor, with its spattered blobs of hardened oil paint, tells the story of over 20 years of creativity.
He works tirelessly – preferring to do so alone, without assistance – creating a maximum of 50 works a year, many of which are in private collections and museums throughout the world, from Belgium to Korea. Says Spiller: ‘I don’t have any grandiose expectations about the effect of my work on people. It’s enough if they want to stop and look… But you want to make a difference, even if it’s only for ten minutes.’
