David Campbell Baldry

Slade trained sculptor David Campbell Baldry makes work in a range of media including, drawing, print and photography. He has instigated and managed a number of major public art installations and is currently researching Kurdish artists in Iraq who use art as a weapon against extremism.

I begin with the scruffy margins of everyday life, not in grand gestures, but in the scratches, smudges, and scuffs that cling to overlooked surfaces. These incidental marks feel less like noise than signals - faint echoes, fleeting moments, impressions upon the mundane. By re-embodying them, the work does not seek to beautify what is found, but to recognise what might otherwise slip unnoticed.

The atmosphere of my current practice has shifted from shadow into ghost. Earlier works carried an architectural weight: objects and bands glimpsed in half-light, silhouettes suggesting rhythm and restraint. Now that order has loosened - lines unravel, smears spread, and streaks erupt across the surface. What was once disciplined structure becomes spectral presence, impressions that linger, resisting obscurity.

In a time dominated by spectacle and the digital shout, I am leaning towards another register. I want to whisper, to slow the eye and the body, to invite the viewer to linger over the seemingly mute or insignificant, to notice what might otherwise be lost.