We are very pleased to announce In Search of a Higher Shelf, a solo exhibition by David Kefford

For the inaugural project at Quip and Curiosity, Kefford, has been in residence over the summer to experiment with methods of displaying a collection of recent sculptures made in response to the unique architecture and history of the space. Refering to notions of daily routines and impossible dreams In Search of a Higher Shelf is an energetic and psychologically charged immersive environment incorporating a gathering of assemblages that embody his personal materialism. 

Kefford’s practice centres around an expanded sculptural framework with his own body as the pivot. Themes such as queer ecology, digital materialism and object relations are imaginatively explored through low-tech, hands-on making processes against a backdrop of a consumer ‘waste’ society. His starting point involves collecting, re-mixing, subverting and transforming under-valued and discarded objects, materials and images which he liberates from the local environment. Non-human or non-organic things have ‘souls’, connecting to animist beliefs and always relating to human presence, acknowledging we are living in the Anthropocene.

Once accumulated, these are then ‘queered up’ through a time-based, durational and fluid process in his physical studio to portray hybrid, biomorphic assemblages, which embody feelings of difference and strangeness. The studio becomes a generative space for the construction and accumulation of precious, non-binary, [non] human companion forms.

Kefford’s work deals with feelings of social disturbance and queer possibility, a merging of multiple narratives in which fact and fiction, intersect. His physical and virtual studios become a diverse cultural archeology of fragmented future artifacts or future-oriented world-building. 

Kefford’s work has been extensively exhibited and commissioned in the UK and internationally. Exhibitions include: The Feel of Things, Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy, Dhaka (2017), Pocket Sculptures, Art at ARB, University of Cambridge (2017), Constructive Spaces, ICA (2016), Sequences VII: Real Time Arts Festival, Iceland (2015) Hey, I’m Mr Poetic, Wysing Arts Centre (2014), Skittish, Vane, Newcastle (2013, The Hair of the Dog, Block 336, London (2012), One Minute Volume 5, De Anza Experimental Film, Cupertino, California (2011) Party Animal, SUGAR, New York (2010), Performing Presence, The National Centre for Contemporary Art, St Petersburg (2010) One Thing Against Another, Aspex, Portsmouth, 2008; ArtFutures 08

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David Kefford: In Search of a Higher Shelf


22nd October until 25 November 2022 by appointment only – contact quipandcuriosity@gmail.com

Quip & Curiosity, 71 Tenison Rd, Cambridge CB1 2EF