David Ainley

In a sustained but largely underground practice, having regard for Cézanne’s exemplary perseverance, David Ainley has been in art for the long haul. The distillation of ideas in painting through adopting procedural strategies with strong metaphorical associations absorbs him. A systems method he developed in the 1970s evolved from an engagement with the ‘Game of Life’ of the mathematician John Horton Conway. Since 1995 he has made paintings and drawings that question the aestheticization of landscape as scenery and its conventions of perception and representation. Mined and quarried places are the subject of reflections on histories of human labour often hidden from admirers of the spectacular and picturesque. Arising from his interest in the relationship between a prospect and the uncertainties of winning ore in mining he infected the rigorously pre-determined aspects of his earlier approach with intuitive procedures and qualitative judgements admitting more elements of surprise. Lengthy processes involving cutting and drawing through successive different monochrome layers echo the efforts of people who laboured at a rate of a handspan a day to win lead from hard rock near his Derbyshire home, artisanal mining that corresponds to the extraction of precious rare earths elsewhere in the world today. Occasional paintings of the figure have a simplicity of form that acknowledges early Cycladic sculpture. His often deceptively simple works invite quiet contemplation. With particular regard to systems, the monochrome and repetition, together with his interest in overlooked human labour in landscape, he says: “I have sought to make of Minimalism an art that is as multi-layered in content as are its sources of reference.”

Biography
Since his first solo exhibition at Ikon, Birmingham (1966) work by David Ainley (b.1943) has featured in many solo shows including ‘Extractive Industry’, Westminster Art Reference Library (2017), London Art Fair (2016), ‘Encounters’, Southwell Minster (2012), ‘Reservoirs of Darkness’, Nottingham Lakeside Arts (2010). He was shortlisted for the Jerwood Drawing Prize (2000,2005,2017) and won the Derby City Open Exhibition (2004). Group exhibitions include INGDiscerning Eye (2012), ‘Contemporary British Abstraction’, London (2015), ‘Contemporary Masters from Britain’, Nanjing (2017-18), ‘Made in Britain: 82 Painters of the 21st Century’, Gdansk, Poland (2019), ‘Arcadia for All? Rethinking Landscape Painting Now’, Leeds & Leicester (2023-24). He taught (1967-2016) fine art practice, theory and art education at universities including Nottingham, lecturing widely in the UK sometimes for Winsor & Newton & Liquitex (2001-05). Entry in: Buckman, D (1998 & 2006) ‘Artists in Britain since 1945’.