SALVE
SALVE (a Romanesque greeting) introduces pieces from several series of works made over the past four years, drawn from research trips to Italy. These new works question systems of visual and harmonic arrangement in light, centred around an archaeological interest in the slippery, particularities of digital photography. Can attentive reconsideration illuminate our new, dark age?
David James Grinly’s work is about the photographic - using photography as a central orienting medium his practice expands into painting, writing and music.
David works as a lecturer in Critical Studies and as a Research Associate, and worked for ten years as a photographer. His approach balances technical understanding with theoretical and philosophical insight, one being as important to his practice as the other.
Defining his work via a series of balances, contradictions and negations.
Roman Painting 09, Overpainted photograph, 26 x 30 cm
Modena and Siena and Alva (2019 - 2022) Digitally painted photograph, 36 x 24 cm Edition 1/10
“theoretical rather than conceptual, theological rather than therapeutic, ethical and legal rather than logical or political, and metaphysical rather than epistemological.”, and describes the central themes of his practice as “photos, faith and love.”
Verbacruce, Altars for Guglielmo and Roman Paintings are works selected from the many hundreds of works David made during the periods in his studio between his residencies in Italy. He says of the works and his production “I make things by ‘not-doing’ things, I photograph by not-photographing and make art by not-art-making. I must always be not-doing something, or rather doing something else. And then by doing something else something which is not-the-thing-itself emerges and seems human. If I try too hard to do a thing then I can’t do it.” And further “...when I am doing something which is not-something else then I am not living or dying either. It is something to do with time, I think?”
Verbacruce are woven photographic works, following the guidance of the Desert Fathers and Mothers.
Untitled Altarpiece (2022) Photographs, overpainted photographs. 200 x 180 cm
Untitled Altarpiece is a fourteen panel arrangement of vernacular photographs and paintings.
“All I will say is that these images, these sounds, these words emerge from suffering and from a belief connected to that suffering that is dignified.”
Verbacruce are woven photographic works, following the guidance of the Desert Fathers and Mothers.
Verbacruce #8 (2022) Woven photographs 30 x 30 cm
Verbacruce #17 (2022) Woven photographs 30 x 30 cm
Verbacruce #15 (2022) Woven photographs 30 x 30 cm
Verbacruce #6 (2022) Woven photographs 30 x 30 cm
Roman Paintings are a series of overpainted photographs based on a reading of Mario’s aria “E lucevan le stelle” from Puccini’s melodrama, Tosca
Roman Painting 11 (2019 - 2021) Overpainted photograph, 26 x 30 cm
Roman Painting 10 (2019 - 2021) Overpainted photograph, 26 x 30 cm
“...new modes of imagining may be forms of rethinking.”
Roman Painting 06 (2019 - 2021) Overpainted photograph, 26 x 30 cm
Altar Guglielmo 01 (2022) Photographic collage on mount board, 59.4 x 84.1 cm
Altars for Guglielmo are photographic arrangements mounted on board, after the work of Count Giuseppe Primoli, and the panel paintings of the early southern European Renaissance.
Altar Guglielmo 04
End.
The exhibition is open at the gallery, Sierra Metro from 25 February → 3rd April 2022
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