David Lock

David Lock’s paintings explore men and masculinities in a process of becoming. The paintings utilise a collagist approach. In the process of creating his Misfit paintings, he makes collages culled from advertisements and imagery from mainstream media. In their making, the collages and subsequent paintings have a performative quality, revealing masculinities as a multifaceted, and ever-changing process.
His Misfit paintings seek to resist a singular reading or viewpoint, informed more by a sense of the unmoored, fluid and contingent. 
Lock’s motivations for the use of the male, exposes an underlying uncertainty about the male’s status in contemporary culture and the role he should fulfil within it.

Alongside his Misfit paintings, Lock makes direct singular paintings, often placed onto large wall based collage installations. 

Lock graduated with an MA in Fine Art from Goldsmiths in 2001, following a BA (Hons) in Fine Art from the University of Reading. 
His painting ‘El Muniria’ was selected for the ‘John Moores Painting Prize, 2018’, after which, the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool purchased the painting for their permanent collection. In 2019 he was a Prizewinner in the ‘Creekside Open’, selected by Sacha Craddock at APT Gallery, London.

In 2021, he curated the exhibition ‘Burra and Friends’ at Rye Art Gallery which showcased the work of Edward Burra and his contemporaries, together with contemporary queer artists.

Lock is a recipient of the prestigious Abbey award at the British School at Rome in 2011-12. Recent commissions include installations for the arts charity Hospital Rooms.

His most recent solo exhibition in 2024 ‘David Lock: In-between Us’ at Firstsite, Colchester, was his first solo UK public exhibition.

He currently lives and works in Belfast.