Dexter Dalwood

Reference monograph

British artist Dexter Dalwood (*1960) has been building a strong reputation over the last decade in the UK, Europe and the United States. This book, featuring major paintings and collages made over the last twelve years, provides a first overview of his work.

Dalwood’s works depict imagined and constructed interiors or landscapes, usually devoid of figures, that act as memorials or descriptions of various historic people, places or moments. They draw on an idea of “History Painting” as a genre and, like their illustrious antecedents, the quotations, allusions and references can be elusive and highly codified at first. But, like the grand eighteenth and nineteenth century works they allude to, the canvases have an immediacy, and power as paintings first and foremost.

The way that Dalwood constructs his pictures, referencing and juxtaposing both image and content, is highly sophisticated. He weaves together personal, social and political histories with art history, popular culture and biography to produce provocative and complex new constellations of meaning. Dalwood’s post-modern, post-Pop “history paintings” display a smart and seductive lightness of touch; an accessibility and wit offered through the shared experience of the collective political and cultural histories they invoke.

The publication includes newly commissioned essays by Michael Bracewell and Terry R. Myers, as well as an extensive interview with the artist by Martin Clark and Florence Derieux. The book is published to accompany the exhibition at Tate St Ives, which is touring to FRAC Champagne-Ardenne (Reims) and CAC Malaga through 2010.

British (UK and Ireland) edition by Tate Publishing.