About

David Spriggs’ art occupies the interval between two and three dimensions.

His works envelop the viewer in a kind of holographic atmosphere, transforming vision into a physical encounter. Across his sculptures and installations, natural phenomena, symbolic colour and monumental forms become subjects through which to explore perception, time and power.

Since 1999, Spriggs has pioneered a spatial language in which painting extends across transparent planes to acquire sculptural volume. Material and open space together sustain forms whose presence can feel commanding even as their continuity becomes uncertain. This sculpture of the immaterial makes the emergence of form part of the viewer’s experience. Boundaries can dissolve, divide or contain, giving the relationship between presence and absence an active role in the meaning of each work.

His concept of Stratachrome makes colour itself a spatial subject. Colour accumulates through depth, acquiring volume, density and atmosphere until it seems capable of occupying an entire architectural space. Extending the concerns of monochrome painting into sculpture, Stratachrome brings the bodily experience of colour into contact with its symbolic, psychological and political meanings. A colour can attract, overwhelm or divide, carrying associations shaped by desire, ideology and cultural memory. Its sensory force becomes inseparable from the meanings attached to it.

Scale intensifies these relationships. In the monumental installations, a single formation can command an entire room, drawing viewers towards it while making them acutely aware of their own bodies. Waves, clouds and vortices acquire an iconic presence, concentrating complex forces into forms that are immediately compelling yet remain elusive. Their apparent weightlessness unsettles the solidity usually associated with a monument. The encounter can bring fascination together with vulnerability, approaching the sublime through the tension between an overwhelming presence and the desire to comprehend it.

Spriggs often presents a form at the threshold of change. A wave gathers before it breaks; a cloud takes shape; an explosive formation holds its outward force in suspension. The works remain physically still, while their rhythms, contours and internal pressures suggest movement. Another kind of movement unfolds through the viewer, whose changing position brings the parts into new relationships. Stillness gives these fleeting conditions duration, allowing the tension of something about to happen to become a sustained experience.

Power runs through the work as both a subject and a condition of the encounter. In Axis of Power, a turbulent formation evokes the concentration and circulation of force, connecting the emergence of order with the possibility of upheaval. In Gold, an inverted monument makes the symbols of financial authority appear precarious. In Transparency Report and Logic of Control, transparency draws the viewer into acts of inspection, entangling the promise of openness with exposure and surveillance. These works examine how power attracts, organises and directs the gaze, and how the viewer becomes involved in those relationships.

Spriggs’ primary method is to spray paint each transparent sheet by hand, developing a cross section of the overall form. A drawing on paper beneath the surface offers a loose guide to position and geometry, while marks, shading and variations in opacity develop freely as he paints. He treats each surface as a canvas, considering its relationship to the sections before and after it, much as an animator works between successive frames. His practice also encompasses engraved glass, layered cut aluminium and UV printed acrylic, extending these investigations across different materials.