David Trigg

Art Writer & Critic

United Kingdom

David Trigg is an art writer and critic based in Bristol, UK. He is a regular contributor to books on contemporary art and his reviews, features and interviews with artists have been published in Studio International, ArtReview, Art Quarterly, Art Monthly, Frieze, The Burlington Magazine, Art Papers and Art in Print.

His book Reading Art (Phaidon Press, 2018) explores the relationship between art and literature, creatively tracing the history of how artists have depicted books as symbols, subjects and objects. It was featured on BBC Radio 4’s Open Book programme and was selected by The Times as a book of the year. His latest book, Spring (Tate Publishing, 2020), explores the season of spring through 50 artworks from the Tate collection.

David's writing appears in numerous other books on art, including African Artists: From 1882 to Now (Phaidon 2021), Vitamin D3 (Phaidon 2021), Great Women Artists (Phaidon, 2019), Vitamin T (Phaidon, 2019), 30-Second Great Art (Ivy Press, 2018), Flying Too Close to the Sun (Phaidon, 2018), Body of Art (Phaidon, 2015) and The Twenty-First Century Art Book (Phaidon, 2014). His interviews with artists are included in Talking Art 2 (Ridinghouse, 2018). He has a PhD in Art History from the University of Bristol and is a member of the International Association of Art Critics.

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Portfolio
Studio International
Mohammed Sami: The Point 0

When US bombs began raining down on Baghdad in 2003, the Iraqi painter Mohammed Sami (b1984) was at home with his parents and nine siblings, fearing for his life.

Burlington
Lakwena Maciver: A green and pleasant land (HA-HA)

At face value, the title of this exhibition reads as a sardonic response to William Blake's famous evocation of England in his poem 'And did those feet in ancient time'. Certainly, it could be considered a comment on the dire state of post-Brexit Britain,

Artreview
Joyfully Disjointed: 'Mixing It Up: Painting Today' - Review

There's no discernible theme to this exuberant multigenerational survey at London's Hayward Gallery - just an exhibition boldly living up to its title. Painting is having its temperature taken again, and evidently the patient is in rude health.

Art UK
Seven questions with Hurvin Anderson | Art UK

Born in Birmingham to Jamaican parents, Hurvin Anderson grew up hearing stories about Jamaica that mythologised his ancestral home. Animated by memory, imagination and personal heritage, his paintings explore his relationship to the Caribbean, a contradictory place filled with charm and beauty yet also tainted by its colonial history and present-day economic hardships.

Studio International
Mit Jai Inn: Dreamworld

Suffused with Buddhist philosophy overlaid with political overtones, the extraordinary works of this Thai artist can be touched, walked over and, in some cases, taken home for free.

Artreview
Diane Simpson at Nottingham Contemporary

Diane Simpson's Samurai 10 (1983) is an impossibly flimsy-looking sculpture. Despite finding its inspiration in the armour of elite Japanese warriors, this wonky freestanding work looks ready to crumple at the slightest breeze. Decorated with pale-red-and-white pencil grids, its intersecting MDF planes pivot and bend in accordance with an unfathomably strange yet satisfying geometry.

Art in Print
Slicing Modern Life: Grosvenor School Linocuts. Dulwich Picture Gallery

Cutting Edge brings together 120 prints, drawing and posters by the pioneering printmakers who captured the spirit of 1930s Britain. This first major show of work from the Grosvenor School of Modern Art features iconic works from Claude Flight and eight of his leading students including Sybil Andrews, Cyril Power, Lill Tschudi, William Greengrass and Leonard Beaumont.