Me, You, the Cosmos and Other People

About

Spike Island is pleased to present new work by acclaimed artist, David Mackintosh. Me, You, the Cosmos and Other People is the most significant exhibition of Mackintosh's work staged to date, and will present newly commissioned drawings, installation and stop motion animation together with a selection of Mackintosh's recent works. For more than a decade, David Mackintosh's work has been characterised by the strict use of black gouache and the creation of a visual world populated by the darkest elements of human behaviour and equally dark humour. Mackintosh's recent work has undergone an intense period of both formal and psychological expansion, introducing abstract forms and a carefully chosen new palette of red, green and yellow to his distinctive black drawings. Me, You, the Cosmos and Other People, curated by Simon Morrissey, will emphasise these developments and will present two newly commissioned works in which Mackintosh explores expanding drawing beyond the page. A new three dimension structure of thin vertical and horizontal oak bars will transform a new body of drawings on coloured paper into a space reminiscent of a elegant washing line, its informality counter-pointed by the precision of the structure and the subtle play of images.

A new stop-frame animation mixes sequences of abstract and representational drawing into a loose narrative that is by turns surreal and seductive, mundane yet macabre. The opening of this exhibition coincides with the launch of Mackintosh's new monograph, Imagine you're in a room full of blind fools desperately grasping at nothing, which acts as a companion publication to the exhibition and features a new essay on Mackintosh's work by the curator.