Welcome to Episode 17 of Pattern Portraits!

Lauren Godfrey chats with artist David Batchelor, about the legacy of the Bauhaus, gilding tortoises and pattern as a cardinal sin.

David Batchelor is an artist well known for his sculptural and light based work that explores his experience of colour within a modern urban environment, and historical conceptions of colour within Western culture. David has exhibited worldwide with recent solo exhibitions in Sao Paolo, London and Edinburgh. He has delivered large scale commissions for London St Pancras Station and Art on the Underground. His book Chromophobia was published in 2000 and is a staple of art school reading lists worldwide.

David’s work delights in colour and shape, playing with the edges, the reflections and the shadows, drawing attention to the underside, the reverse or the back of a sculptural form, testing and flexing the parameters of our relationship to colour and the myriad ways we experience it.

David and I met earlier this year when I was tasked with making a series of beaded works on his behalf for his solo exhibition at Cecilia Brunson Projects in London. Though I was already a fan of his work, upon visiting his studio I discovered a cocoon of colour and a party of patterned references beyond what I could have imagined. We bonded over a shared love of colour charts for zips and getting giddy about chains dripping with perspex swatches!

David has chosen a delicious selection of patterns with a global reach including a Mondrian painting (Composition with Grid IX) from 1919, an Anni Albers work on paper from 1967, a 1965 quilt by Sue Willie Seltzer of the Gee’s Bend quilt makers and a Zulu beadwork date unknown. 

You can see all of David’s patterns and more on instagram @patternportraitspodcast

‘Purple Punctuation’ - The PATTERN PORTRAIT print artwork to accompany David’s interview and featuring the patterns we discuss is available to buy now at www.laurengodfrey.co.uk

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