David Walker Kennedy: I’ve Got the Pox
Maison Touchard, London UK
7.3.2020
Phyllis, everything’s fucked, I’ve got the pox.
Thirty days in the sweatbox, vomiting muck!
O Lord, I’m sorry for my rotten life,
And if this time your fury doesn’t slay me,
I solemnly swear to only do ass-fucking.
~ Theophile de Viau, Everything’s Fucked (shortened), 1623
Auditory memory decays rapidly, about 8 seconds is its limit.
David Walker Kennedy presents a durational sound-work collated from false memories, stolen ideas and forgotten conversations. I’ve got the Pox is driven by confusion, fear, desire and the power of time to reframe everything. The longer the better, because being forgetful is powerful. Drawing from research gathered over a month at the Venice Biennale, the work is part of a larger exploration of the potential of sound to oppose the increasing speed of the artistic experience.
David Walker Kennedy (b. 1996, Glasgow) is an interdisciplinary artist based in Glasgow. Graduating from Painting & Printmaking at the Glasgow School of Art in 2017 and selected for Bloomberg New Contemporaries in 2017, Kennedy has since exhibited individually and with collective Still House Plants notably at Empty Gallery, Hong Kong,(2019) Hyperlocal, Buenos Aires (2019), De Player, Rotterdam (2019), KRAAK, Brussels(2018) and The Modern Institute, Glasgow (2018). Kennedy is one of the featured artists with Still House Plants for Counterflows festival, Glasgow (2020) and was recently a recipient of the OTO Projects UK artist residency supported by the Jerwood Foundation, Cafe OTO, London (2019). Other residencies include the Venice Steward-research Fellowship (2019), CCA/AC Projects music residency, Glasgow (2018) and Pipe Factory residency, Glasgow (2017)