David Osbaldeston, Your Answer is Mine, 2006 (installation view)
David Osbaldeston, Your Answer is Mine, 2006 (detail)
David Osbaldeston, Your Answer is Mine, 2006 (installation view)
...First came the person, then came the system, that is the way it used to be. Now society produces and the person consumes. Everyone can criticise, strike out, demystify and suggest reforms, but such action must remain within the system; no one is permitted to be free. (...) While rejecting consumer society (the artist) discovers they are a producer. Freedom is an empty word. The artist is tied to history, or better, perhaps, to the programme, and exits from the present. (...)
[Germano Celant, Arte Povera, Notes for a Guerilla War, 1967]
For his first solo exhibition at Matt’s Gallery and first solo exhibition in London, David Osbaldeston will present a large scale soft-ground etching on paper made specifically for a billboard structure within the gallery space. Using a labour intensive medium within the framework of advertising, he creates an awkward dialogue between the production and distribution of visual culture.
Long since confined in any commercial sense to the dustbin as a form of image making, the hand-made etching presents itself as an outmoded technology. In an ideological battle of inappropriate wills between the hand-made and mechanically produced; like some bastard little brother of punk king Jamie Reid's visual lexicon, or re-articulation of Tristan Tzara's agit prop. A series of highly subjective reflections and observations fill the yawning surface of a billboard to produce a forced marriage of inconveniance. The laboriously hand-produced images form to complete a single massive etching of a photocopy of a drawing of a collage, rendered in black and white as an image of an image. The authority and logic of design is interrupted by digressive voices, as appropriated artworks appear as cameos, interspersed with an obsessive culture of pie charts and accountability - explored as construction, as fiction. David Osbaldeston's work is concerned with the production of art and its positioning and reception, both within the gallery tradition and the structures that surround it. His ongoing publishing project Stellar uses drawing, collage and text to produce a critical response to the work of artists and galleries. In Your Answer is Mine obsolete visual languages that once penetrated the public consciousness are recalled as posters and pamphlets form reference points in an advertising copywriters' allusion to describe what it might mean to maintain a radical view in order to affect one.Born Northampton, England 1968, Lives and works in Manchester Studied 2000–2002 Manchester Metropolitan University, MA Fine Art, and 1989–1992 Sheffield City Polytechnic, BA Fine Art Solo Exhibitions 2015 The Top & Bottom of It, Mechanism for a Future Reference, Matt’s Gallery (office) London; 2014 Chancellors Fellow, Residency in Art Writing, Edinburgh College of Art & Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop; Annals of the Twenty Ninth Century, Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge; The Measure of All Things, Collective Gallery, Edinburgh; 2013 Living Matter – Inflection Sandwich, Piper Keys, London; Living Matter – What’s Been Before, Remains to be Seen, Onomatopee, Eindhoven; 2010 Out of Time (The Light of Day, The Action of the Play), Castlefield Gallery, Manchester; 2008 Another Shadow Fight, International Project Space, UCE, Bourneville, Birmingham; 2007 Gest: Future Criticism, Stanley Picker Gallery, Kingston University, London; Frozen Tears III, Koenig Books, London, Dexter Sinister & Creative Time, New York; 2006 Your Answer is Mine, Matt's Gallery, London; Group Exhibitions and Activities 2014 Annals of the Twenty Ninth Century, Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge; Double Purpose, The CASS, London; A Model of the Serving Library, Tate, Liverpool; 2013 Drawing Biennial, The Drawing Room, London; Life is an Illusion, Love is a Dream, The Royal Standard, Liverpool; Two Way Mirror (on-site work) Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge; Publish & be Damned, ICA, London; 2012 Marbled Reams, The Modern Institute, Glasgow; What We Have Done and What We Are About to Do, CCA, Glasgow; Publish & be Damned, ICA, London; 2011 Orbitecture 2, Focal Point Gallery, Southend-on-Sea; Suppono Subpono; E:vent Gallery, London; 2010 Rijksakademie Open Ateliers, Amsterdam; Avalon, Embassy Gallery, Edinburgh; 2009 Print Biennial, Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne; Extended Caption / Dexter Sinister, Culturegest, Porto (catalogue); Your Answer is Mine, 4X4, The Bluecoat, Liverpool; Abstract Cabinet, Eastside Projects, Birmingham; 2008 The Pleasure of Your Company, Nought to Sixty, ICA, London (catalogue); 2006 EASTWORK Commission (Non Despatch 124 and a quarter), EAST International, Norwich; 2005 10 Point Plan For a Better Cornerhouse, international 3 and Cornerhouse, Manchester; Not Yet Night, Studio Voltaire, London; Publish and be Damned, Distribution Fair and Touring Exhibition, London, CASCO, Utrecht; Drawing 200, The Drawing Room, London; Social Club, works on and with paper, Grundy Art Gallery, Blackpool; 2004 Artist's Commission for Put About, An Anthology on Independent Publishing, Book Works, London. Romantic Detatchment, PS1 MoMA, New York; Slimvolume, Redux, London and Outpost Norwich; PILOT:1, International Art Forum, Limehouse, London; Friday 13, works on and with paper, Galleri s.e., Bergen; 2003 Copy Cat, Aarhus Art Academy, Denmark and Mess Hall, Chicago; I Am A Curator, Chisenhale Gallery, London; Translator, VANE, The Guildhall, Newcastle Upon Tyne; 2002 Serial Context, Visual Research Centre, Dundee Contemporary Arts, Dundee; Commissions and Awards 2014 Chancellors Fellow, Residency in Art Writing, Edinburgh College of Art & Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop; 2013 ConventionT Residency, Wysing Arts Centre, Bourn, Cambridge; 2010-15 ACME Firesation Residency, London; 2010 Dutch Ministry of Culture, Rjksakademie Van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam; 2004-05 Research and Development Grant, Grizedale Arts; 2003 The Retina's Responsibility, Exhibition Text, Bloomberg New Contemporaries, Cornerhouse, Manchester, then 14 Wharf Rd, London.
2015 Bob Dickenson, Art Monthly, June; Manifesto for a Photocopier, ARTPAPERS, May/June, Atlanta, Georgia, US; Modern History, Art Monthly insert, May; 2013 Kunstwordtterugkunst, Issue 5, Hertogenbosch, Netherlands; 2012 Fictioneers (Richard Kostalanetz, Bryony Bond), Issue 3, Corridor 8; 2009 Out of Time, cover & chapter commission, MUTE Vol 2, Issue 13; 2008 Michelle Cotton, Nought to Sixty, Art Monthly, Dec/Jan; Art on Paper, 5th Annual Print & Edition Review, Nov/Dec; 5th Annual New Prints Review, Art on Paper, Vol13 No2, Nov/Dec; Angharad Lewis, Case Study Interview, Grafik, Nov; Martin Hopkinson, Print Quarterly, Vol XXV; Dusk Notice Manifesto, Art Review, July/August; Dot, Dot, Dot, Issue 16 A W.A.S.T.E of Ink (after Thomas Pynchon); Dave Freak, What's On Magazine, 9 February; Wayne Burrows, Metro News, 24 February; Another Shadow Fight, International Project Space, University of Central England, Bourneville, Birmingham (Booklet interview with Andrew Hunt); 2006 JJ Charlesworth, Art Monthly, issue 300; Andrew Hunt, Frieze, issue 103; Sarah Kent, Time Out, issue 1881; Jessica Lack, The Guardian, 2 September; Your Guess is as Good as Mine, Richard Dorment, The Daily Telegraph 5 September; MANIFESTO: DUSK NOTICE, Art Review July/August; Charlotte Bonham Carter, Untitled, issue 40; Your Answer is Mine, Maria Fusco, Matt’s Gallery, London; 2005 Thinking Machines V The Big Swap, Maria Fusco, Collections, ten two zero zero five, AN Magazine; Put About, An Anthology on Independent Publishing, Book Works, London; 2004 Aperto Manchester, Feature, Neil Mulholland, Flash Art International, Issue 232; On Communication (Editor), Published and distributed by Cornerhouse; Put About, An Anthology on Independent Publishing, Book Works, London; 2003 Artranspennine 03, Review, Neil Mulholland, Frieze, Issue 79.