(click image for more details)Now I Feel a Bit Weird, 2008
marker on board
42cm x 29cm (unframed)
Crumpled up Plane, 2008
42cm x 29cm (unframed)
Blind Spot about the Bomb, 2008
21cm x 14.5cm
David Sherry's drawings combine image and text in a manner that informs and reflects his performative works. Often humorous, even ridiculous to many, his performances acknowledge the historical lineage of performance art from the 1970s onwards, whilst also gently mocking some of its more pretentious and macho tendencies. However, Sherry approaches his durational performances with nothing less than seriousness in terms of the stamina required for a work such as 'Just popped out, back in 2 hours', performed at the 2008 Zoo Art Fair, where Sherry sat motionless and blank eyed with the titular text scrawled onto a Post-it stuck to his head.
'Carrying a Bucket of Water About for a Week', 'Running for the Bus', 'Avoiding Eye Contact for One Seven Day Period':
Sherry's titles are usually self-explanatory and reveal the fine line he treads between engagement and alienation with his audience – often the 'general public' – presenting his actions outside of an art context and rubbing up against 'real life' and its attendant social conventions. 'Sherry's performances, in this sense, subtly test the patience and sympathies of the general public who witness them and as such allow him to examine the limits of the social contract.'1
Paul Stone, 2008
1. Neil Mulholland, Open frequency, Axis, 2007
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