David Hockney
Video Brings Its Time to You, You Bring Your Time to Paintings and Drawings

An exhibition by David Hockney entitled Video Brings Its Time to You, You Bring Your Time to Paintings and Drawings will go on show at Annely Juda Fine Art in London from 28 February – 25 April 2020.  The show coincides with Hockney’s exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery which opens on 27 February 2020.

The exhibition includes 18 portraits on canvas of Hockney’s friends and associates, from fellow artists to well-known musicians such as Ed Sheeran and Bruno Mars.  Painted using a mixture of charcoal, crayon and acrylic on canvas, the works display Hockney’s brilliant draughtsmanship and distinctive use of line and colour. In addition, five coloured ink drawings on paper feature those such as the artist’s sister, Margaret Hockney, and Scarlett Clark, the granddaughter of Hockney’s long-time muse, Celia Birtwell. 

The exhibition also includes two multiple perspective videos: Woldgate Woods, Winter 2010 (9 screens) and Seven Yorkshire Landscapes, 2011 (18 screens).  Filmed in Hockney’s native Yorkshire, in these videos Hockney continues his career-long exploration of single point perspective.  By attaching multiple cameras to a car and driving through Yorkshire’s rural landscape, these videos are presented on multiple screens to comprise one work. In doing so, various perspectives are presented at one time.  As Hockney said, this “forces the eye to scan, and it is impossible to see everything at once.  […] as in the real world you choose which objects to look at and in which order to do so.”

In addition to the portraits and videos, three photographic drawings will also be featured in the exhibition. Interior scenes of Hockney’s LA studio feature friends and colleagues along with studio equipment and various elements of furniture, props and mirrors. By making composite images of photographs and paintings, Hockney amalgamates various viewpoints, deliberately altering perspective and throwing our traditional understanding of depth off-kilter. 

David Hockney is constantly exploring new technological possibilities in art. He has embraced the use of the iPad, video, polaroid and photoshop as a means to create works that stand alongside his works of more traditional methods such as painting and drawing.  Now in his eighties, Hockney’s investigations into how to depict more truly how we ‘see’ is unwavering and renders him arguably one of the most celebrated artists of his generation and perhaps the most recognised living artist today.