David Godbold is an artist working with drawing, painting and mixed media to scrutinise the production, circulation and reception of imagery across high and low culture. He uses motifs from a medley of sources, including old master painting, religious icons, children’s colouring books, comics and satirical cartoons, mining the history of visual culture for imagery that feels familiar and yet wholly out-of-ordinary in their new context. Godbold overlays these fragments with daubs of paint, graffiti-like scrawlings or snippets of text, creating chatty palimpsests: text/images that juxtapose antiquated imagery – ink drawings or woodcut-style illustrations – with irreverent, comical or contemplative captions. His works vary from large-scale canvases to small, irreverent works on discarded pieces of paper: receipts, tickets, or shopping lists. Transforming the flotsam of everyday existence into works of art and vice versa, Godbold desanctifies the holy and elevates the ephemeral. As well as its cutting humour, his work is marked by its philosophical awareness, underpinned by the artist’s PhD research; beauty and wonder; and a sense of humility in the face of history.
David Godbold lives and works in Dublin.
David Godbold
Untitled (anti-grav[ity] birdlife), 2015
acrylic, crayon, pencil, oil and oil stick on canvas
76 x 61 cm / 29.9 x 24 in
David Godbold
Untitled (Night Navigator), 2015
acrylic, crayon, oil and oil stick on canvas
150 x 120 cm / 59.1 x 47.2 in
David Godbold
Untitled (Duelists with green clouds), 2015
acrylic, crayon, oil and oil stick on canvas
150 x 120 cm / 59.1 x 47.2 in
Collection of The Arts Council of Ireland
David Godbold
Untitled (Night for day), 2015
acrylic, oil and oil stick on canvas and neon
175 x 175 cm / 68.9 x 68.9 in
David Godbold
Untitled (#Daydreaming/7:03am), 2015
acrylic, water colour, oil and oil stick on canvas, framed drawing and neon
150 x 120 cm / 59.1 x 47.2 in
21 x 15 cm / 8.3 x 5.9 in
David Godbold
Untitled (Flowers), 2014-5
acrylic, ink, oil and oil stick on linen
60 x 50 cm / 23.6 x 19.7 in
David Godbold
There’s always one, 2012
Ink and pencil on tracing paper laid over found paper
29.7 x 21 cm / 11.7 x 8.3 in unframed
43.6 x 35.4 cm / 17.2 x 13.9 in framed
David Godbold
A.K.A Big Balls, 2012
Ink and pencil on tracing paper laid over found paper
29.7 x 21 cm / 11.7 x 8.3 in unframed
43.6 x 35.4 cm / 17.2 x 13.9 in framed
David Godbold
Whatever, 2012
ink and pencil on tracing paper laid over found card
29.7 x 21 cm / 11.7 x 8.3 in unframed
43.6 x 35.4 cm / 17.2 x 13.9 in framed
David Godbold
It gets darker with the day II, 2009-10
acrylic on canvas
140 x 200 cm / 55.1 x 78.7 in
David Godbold
...yet in so many ways it had been such a good day, 2008
acrylic on canvas
175 x 250 cm / 68.9 x 98.4 in
David Godbold
Things Happen (Nightfall version), 2011
acrylic on canvas
140 x 200 cm / 55.1 x 78.7 in unframed
144 x 204 x 5.5 cm / 56.7 x 80.3 x 2.2 in framed
David Godbold
Welcome to the wonderful world, 2008
acrylic on canvas
175 x 300 cm / 68.9 x 118.1 in
David Godbold
Time changes everything, 2006
wall drawing, acrylic, pencil and vinyl text on wall
dimensions variable
David Godbold’s work has been exhibited at MoMA PS1 and Apexart, New York; The ICA, the Whitechapel Gallery, and the Barbican Centre, London; ACCA Melbourne; Altspace Sydney; the British School at Rome; Kunstmuseum Thun, Switzerland; The Irish Museum of Modern Art, the Hugh Lane and Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin and most recently at Golden Thread Gallery, Belfast (2018). His work can be found in the collections of Gemeentemuseum Helmand, the Netherlands; the Parliamentary Art Collection, London; Trinity College Dublin and the Irish Museum of Modern Art.
David Godbold
Nightfall - amplissium terrarum tractum, 2018
Golden Thread Gallery, Belfast, Northern Ireland
David Godbold
The end of the beginning of the beginning of the end, 2009
Butler Gallery, Killkenny, Ireland
David Godbold
A change of plan, 2009
The Process Room, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Ireland
![David Godbold 
Untitled (anti-grav[ity] birdlife), 2015
acrylic, crayon, pencil, oil and oil stick on canvas
76 x 61 cm / 29.9 x 24 in   
 ](https://img.artlogic.net/w_1800,h_1000,c_limit/exhibit-e/6026ca599b88566687556cb2/369bb1c7cdd752d3ee1098d64f3b8e45.jpeg)
![David Godbold 
Untitled (anti-grav[ity] birdlife), 2015
acrylic, crayon, pencil, oil and oil stick on canvas
76 x 61 cm / 29.9 x 24 in   
 ](https://img.artlogic.net/w_647,h_647,c_limit/exhibit-e/6026ca599b88566687556cb2/369bb1c7cdd752d3ee1098d64f3b8e45.jpeg)
