CRYPT RESIDENCY 2024: DAVID BARRON

CRYPT RESIDENCY 2024
DAVID BARRON
Open: 19-23 August
2-4pm Daily 

No man is an island,

Entire of itself

Every man is a piece of the continent,

A part of the main.

If a clod be washed away by the sea,

Europe is the less.

As well as if a promontory were.

As well as if a manor of thy friend’s

Or of thine own were:

Any man’s death diminishes me,

Because I am involved in mankind,

And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;

It tolls for thee.

John Donne

My practice mainly involves drawing.  I have always found the process of producing art using the simplest, most direct means almost magical, and so I most frequently use pencil, charcoal, and ink.  Recently I have been experimenting with moving off the two-dimensional surface and drawing in space using rope, a material that exemplifies the principle of the whole being stronger than the sum of its parts as well as producing literal connections.

As well as being an artist, I’m a sociologist.  As such, I’ve had a long interest in the forces that bind societies together: cultures, norms, cooperation, trust.  Human societies are essentially social networks.  People are connected, are inter-dependent with each other, in countless ways.  Some of these connections are distant: I’ve no idea who is involved in generating the electivity that is delivered to my house, but I know I depend on them.  At the other extreme are my closest friends and family members.  But they all involve a sharing that means we are better off, happier because of being part of the networks than we would be if we were on our own.

My art practice reflects these interests.  It is about connections.  Connections between plants in woodland.  Connections between people.  Connections between living things.  Connections between the living and the dead.  I spend a lot of time drawing in nature, woodland in particular.   Like people, trees and other plants are part of complex networks, connected to each other by fungal “pipes”.  No plant is an island, it turns out, or at least plants that are isolated do less well than those that are part of the mycorrhizal network.  I tend to draw the less obvious parts of woodland: brambles, nettles, dead trees.  These may be less prominent than the trees, but they are no less important.  Perhaps we need reminding that the success of a society doesn’t depend only on its highest profile members, but also on vast numbers of often invisible people.

I’m also interested in the connections between the living and the dead.  Fallen trees are dead, but they continue to provide resources that are valuable to many living things.  The same is true for humans.  As Maya Angelou wrote in her poem When Great Trees Fall:

And when great souls die,

after a period peace blooms,

slowly and always

irregularly. Spaces fill

with a kind of

soothing electric vibration.

Our senses, restored, never

to be the same, whisper to us.

They existed. They existed.

We can be. Be and be

better. For they existed.