DAVID ROBILLIARD

Text by Danny Calvi 

Photography by Paul Knight

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.

'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.

'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.

'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.

'A Roomful of Hungry Looks'
(Acrylic on canvas, private collection, Belgium)