Photography by Paul Knight
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| David wears his customized 'Swallowing Helmets' T-shirt, shorts and black socks at the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven. |
In April, the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London showed twelve paintings by the late punk poet David Robilliard. Except for a couple tiny gallery shows, it’s been almost two decades since the witty poet and painter’s graphic, word-based canvases had been exhibited in a major museum.
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| 'Box of Tricks — My Ass' (Acrylic on canvas, private collection) |
David Robilliard’s first solo show of crude drawings in 1984 was also the setting for the publication of his first book of poems by friends and patrons, Gilbert & George. They knew him as ‘…the sweetest, kindest, most infuriating, artistic, foul-mouthed, witty, sexy, charming, handsome, thoughtful, unhappy, loving and friendly person we ever met’. It was David who recruited all those gorgeous lads who appeared in the artist duo’s early eighties work.
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| 'Disposable Boyfriends' (Acrylic on canvas, private collection, Frankfurt) |
Back when the dungeon fetish depot Expectations was the busiest shop around now-trendy Shoreditch, David shared a cheap studio space with Andrew Heard — it was just a short walk to the London Apprentice, a local leather bar — and there he produced eight volumes of poetry, a few hundred drawings, and sixty or so paintings. The naive paintings, which are totally informed by his poetry, seem to articulate a kind of bitchy common sense.
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| 'Too Many Cocks Spoil the Breath' (Acrylic on canvas, collection Jochen Peter, Frankfurt am Main) |
Even when Robilliard found out he was HIV-positive, he made light of his condition, introducing himself as ‘David Robilliaids’. Where his poems had previously alluded to a fun-loving series of crushes, they now took on a more ironic and cryptic tone. David died of at the age of thirty-six.
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| 'A Roomful of Hungry Looks' (Acrylic on canvas, private collection, Belgium) |
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