Faded

When

Open to the public:

11am - 4pm every day, October 6th - 15th, free entry.

Opening night:

6.30pm, October 5th by invitation

Where

367 Railway Arches, Geffrye Street, London, England, E2 8HZ

What

A new show from artist David Speed

Celebrating Human Vibrancy and the Beauty in Everyday Moments

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About the show

FADED showcases a new style for me. Here is how this development occurred;

The portraits

The idea for ‘Faded’ first started when I was painting audience submission portraits as part of my street work, in a continuing project called #beneonI particularly noticed people’s joy, pride and confidence as they discover neon versions of themselves in the street.
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I began thinking about identity and how we want to appear to the world. I started to wonder how a fully confident human might appear if they weren’t afraid of judgement and were becoming full of light. I thought about how Keith Haring would often paint figures who radiate light and how Caravaggio painted the stark contrast of bright light on solid black. I used the brightest pigment I could find, along with the darkest black available on the market.

This new body of work tells a story of discovery and evolution, as the subjects, (most of whom submitted images to #beneon), are in the process of stepping into their true identity’s. The painting process involves creating the work in full colour realism and afterwards adding a layer of neon. In some ways I am destroying the original painting, which is a direct reference to my street paintings and their ephemerality. Destroying while creating, washing away the before with something new.

The objects

My next step on this journey took me firmly out of my comfort zone as I started experimenting with still life paintings. I wanted to see if adding neon to inanimate objects would transform them in the same way it did for my portraits. Could I turn something as mundane and literally disposable as a plastic bottle or cigarette lighter, into something beautiful, desirable or even iconic?

My first few paintings were challenging, as I grappled with the technical difficulties of creating these images on a small scale, using only spray paint, as well as constantly questioning whether I should stay in my comfort zone and continue only painting portraits. As the first pieces started to come together, the floodgates opened and in a very freeing moment I realised I could now draw inspiration from literally anything.

This work certainly gives a nod to pop art and the countless artist’s who have been inspired by Warhol’s work on consumerism. Some of the paintings carried a certain weight; apples, for example, have been painted throughout history, used to symbolise life, death, love, fertility and much more. Flowers, similarly, have historically represented life, death and impermanence.
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When I first started my career, I wrote ‘Exploring Illumination’ in the first line of my Instagram bio. This body of work is a continuation of this exploration. It has taken me a year to produce, pushing my technical abilities to the limit while allowing me to explore and ‘play’, more than ever before.

view the collection