DOMOBAAL

*1979 UK
lives/works in Essex

David Gates is an image catcher retrieving and fixing images, sometimes this happens using pinhole photography, and sometimes through collage. He also works with leaves and feathers. His primary tool is pinhole photography directly onto silver gelatin on bitumen on cardboard. Resolutely eschewing the sublime and stubbornly unromantic he reduces and edits grand landscapes, 300 year old trees in the landscape of coastal Essex where he lives to the semblance of a mugshot. Bleak holiday houses on the Thames estuary remain bleak and shuttered even when occupied. People free images offer a world shaped by individuals and people mostly long gone and unknown who have planted and planned and built to fulfil their dreams. Ancient oaks forests and grim bungalows all stand silently to attention as if bearing witness to an unseen happening.

Once, standing by a lake with my pinhole camera and tripod halfway through a two minute exposure someone approached me and asked 'are you waiting for something to happen?'

(above 'Long Island' SD videotape, 02:26min 2001)

David Gates: biography pdf

Education

2004 – 2006 MA Printmaking UWE, Bristol, UK

1999 – 2002 BA Printmaking, Winchester School of Art, UK

Solo Exhibitions and Interventions (selected)

2018

: Götzbau (with Lothar Götz), Bradfield, Essex, ongoing, open by appointment.

2016/7

: Found & Forged, domobaal.

2014

: Standard Image, Copenhagen Photography Festival, CPF 2014 Denmark.

2013

: Aus dem Feld, Wilson Chamber, Berlin Gallery Weekend.

: The Rural College of Art, domobaal.

: fig.(i) Qbox, Athens, Greece.

2012

: More birds of the day, The Tool Shed, Silk Mill Quarter, Merchants Barton, Frome, Somerset, UK.

2010

: Sténopé La Librairie Photographique, Paris, France.

Group Exhibitions (selection)

2019

: This Is Not An Oak Tree, Jugg Art Foundation, Ipswich Annual Biennial, UK.

: International Lawns/The Rural College of Art/Disinformation at White Box Gallery, Blackheath, London.

: Backyard Sculpture, a collection assembled by Gates and Gall at domobaal.

: Peckham 24, London.

: millimetre 02, Kingsgate Project Space, Kingsgate Workshops, 110–116 Kingsgate Road, London NW6 2JG.

: Art Projects: Dialogues, curated by Kiki Mazzucchelli at the London Art Fair 2019 with Aubrey Haskard, Lothar Götz, Maud Cotter, Neil Gall, Neil Zakiewicz, Nicky Hirst.

2014

: 4th Anniversary Show, Galleri Naboløs, Copenhagen, Denmark

: Art in the Home #2 York, by invitation from the Contemporary Art Society North.

: A Circle: Christopher Rountree, David Gates, Rupert Ackroyd, International Lawns (Andrew Curtis and Niall Monro) domobaal

2015

: The Manchester Contemporary

2013

: 8½ Posters, (with Andrew Curtis) each: sizes variable, edition 10, inkjet print with screen–print text, fly–posted by invited collaborators in various locations: Florida, New York, Taipei, Tokyo, Manchester (UK), San Francisco, Bogota, Berlin, Athens, Harwich (UK) ao.

2012

: The Spring Exhibition, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen, Denmark.

2011

: Your Garden is Looking a Mess Could You Please Tidy it up, curated by Andrew Curtis, PayneShurvell, London.

: Known, Unknown, Anonymous and On Death Row, Qbox, Athens, Greece.

2010

: Still in Motion, The Horse Hospital, London.

2008

: 4 Regards, Sténopé la Librairie Photographique, Paris, France.

2007

: Committed to Print, Royal West of England Academy, Bristol, UK.

2006

: Kettle's Yard Open, Kettle's Yard, Cambridge, UK.

: Collotype. Past, Present and Future, St Bride Printing Library, London.

Other

2013

: Blackwater Polytechnic Open Day, 6 July, Feering Bury Farm Barn, Essex, UK.

: The Rural College of Art, Open Day on Saturday 18 May as part of WC1/EC1 Galleries Open Day.

: CART Saturday 30 March, 10 am until late, Wrabness, Essex.

2012

: Residency on the island of Kea, Greece.

Press

2013

: independent.co.uk feature, March 11.

: The World of Interiors, Conde Nast, March issue.

: Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation (television) interview in Athens, February.