205. David Gardner - An Acre Unto Me

2026
Collage and acrylic on wood panel
15.2 x 15.2 x 2 cm

David Gardner creates figurative paintings and drawings that interrogate his own queer body and its relationship to different spaces, both real and imagined. Throughout his work, the body is partially concealed and partially revealed, emerging behind veils, fences, foliage, and layered surfaces. These staged images unfold slowly, initiating an act of looking in which the viewer’s gaze must penetrate thresholds and barriers to enter the picture plane.

Colour plays a central role within Gardner’s practice. His paintings often radiate with vivid, luminous tones that appear lit from within, creating an atmosphere that feels simultaneously intimate, theatrical, and psychologically charged. Through this interplay of concealment, light, and surface, his work explores themes of vulnerability, desire, identity, and visibility.

Gardner completed The Drawing Year postgraduate diploma at the Royal Drawing School (2019), following a BA in Fashion Design Womenswear at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London (2011), and a Foundation in Art and Design at Newcastle College (2006).

Solo exhibitions include Haunted by Paradise with Wilder Gallery and Delphian Gallery, London (2024), and Venus as a Boy at Maison Bertaux, London (2021).

Selected group exhibitions include Drawn Together at the Royal Drawing School, London (2026); Main Protagonist at Slugtown, Newcastle upon Tyne (2025); Under The Laurels at Weald Contemporary (2024); Like a Beacon Against The Cold at LBF Contemporary, London (2024); Al Dente: Feast for the Senses at Berntson Bhattacharjee, London (2023); Shipping Address at Palazzo Monti, Brescia (2023); Disrupted Harmony at Public Service Gallery, Stockholm (2023); the ACS Winners Group Show at Gurr Johns, London (2023); the Ralph Lauren Group Show at the Mayfair Flagship Store, London (2023); Wild Things at Hexum Gallery, Vermont (2023); Paint Talk at VO Curations, London (2022); the African Fashion Exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, and touring internationally (2022); Missing You at Windsor Castle (2022); the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize exhibitions (2016 & 2022); the Ruth Borchard Self Portrait Prize (2021); and Best of the Drawing Year at Christie’s, London (2019).

Awards include the ACS Studio Prize from the Artist Collecting Society (2022), the Delphian Open Call Award (2022), and the Colin Barnes Drawing Award at Central Saint Martins (2011). His work is held in collections including the Victoria and Albert Museum, The Royal Collection, the Sir Paul Smith Collection, the Sir Michael Moritz Collection, and the Taylor Family Collection.