Maureen Paley is pleased to present David Thorpe’s first solo exhibition.

David Thorpe uses paper collage to construct and ‘physically make’ his own world. Having graduated from Goldsmiths’ MA in 1998, he has been included in a number of group shows in London and abroad.

The new work is beginning to move out from the urban city, that has preoccupied the earlier work, towards the wilderness, “home of the independent maverick spirit and of epic adventures.” Thorpe has looked at Albert Bierstadt and some of the Hudson River school painters , the architects Bruce Goff and John Lautner as well as the architecture of GLC buildings and housing estates which he refers to as “English brutalism” for inspiration. This work has been made as a time consuming and painstakingly hand crafted labour of love often to the soundtrack of Copland’s Hoe-Down.

He is concerned with depiction of epic moments mixed with the mundane. Some of the pictures are of precariously placed buildings and caravans craning for a better view of their world. There is a narrative at work that is as enigmatic as that which motivated the Blair Witch Project. However, rather than focus on the dark side of life the newer work is more optimistic and lighter in spirit.