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Douglas White's Octopus Drawings are remnants of a strange material process. To produce these works he buys an octopus from a fishmarket and removes the ink-sac. He then dips the octopus in its own ink and prints the inked body directly onto blotting paper. Due to the qualities of the ink and the paper, the process records uncanny levels of detail of the animal’s skin, tentacles and suckers, whilst often also generating seemingly abstract visual elements.

Given the contingency of the process, White has little control over the drawing's final form and for each work that is retained and displayed, many are discarded. Accordingly White's Octopus Drawings can be imagined almost as acts of divination, and his method related to various Surrealist traditions of automatic writing or mark making in which forms emerges through chance and the suppression of conscious intentionality.

At the heart of White’s practice lies an engagement with the transformative and the poetically redemptive possibilities of art. He often scavenges discarded, overlooked and forgotten objects and materials, natural and man-made that, through sculptural interventions, both minimal and profound, he imbues with new life and new meanings.

Accolades

Education: Royal College of Art, London, MA Sculpture, 2003-2005. Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, Oxford, BFA Fine Art, 1997-2000

Recent solo Exhibtions: 2019 Collected Works, Modern Forms, London. 2019 Mr Majidi and the Electricity Box, VO Curations, London. 2017 Portraits of my Father as a Horseshoe Bat, Galerie Valerie Bach, Brussels.

Recent Group Exhibitions: 2019, ARVORE!, Praca Aldopho Bloch, Sao Paolo. 2019 Futurs Antérieurs, Maison Guerlain, Paris. 2019 Inner Life, Studio BWA, Wroclaw. 2018, Warmingland, Hotel de Ville, Paris. 2018, She Sees the Shadows , Oriel Mostyn, Wales. 2018, Islands, Annely Juda Fine Art, London. 2018, Magic and Method, Frestonian Gallery, London. 2018, La Saga, Double V Gallery, Marseilles.

www.douglaswhite.co.uk
@douglaswhiteart