“Black and White Paintings II” is the name of the exhibition by Robbie Williams & Ed Godrich, which opens on the 30th of November 2022 in Sotheby’s Dubai.
An artist duo, Singer songwriter Robbie Williams and his friend and creative collaborator, Ed Godrich, work together, creating abstract paintings. They have been creating original art together for the past five years and have already produced over a hundred pieces. Sotheby’s Dubai will be presenting their canvases, at the dedicated selling exhibition from 30 November to 16 December 2022.
Answering the question “Where does your inspiration come from”, Robbie and Ed mentioned niche subcultures which were revolving around youth at the time when both of them were young. “Early rap culture, graffiti, hip hop […] humour and whimsy, and mischief, and getting away with it […] All those good things that you feel when you […] go and try to be a grown up for the first time.” Ed remembered the exhibition of an English sculptor Richard Wilson at Saatchi Art Gallery in London in 1987 being an enormous inspiration for him.
Speaking about their paintings, Ed said: “All the characters are in our head and they come to life as the painting develops. Sometimes a character will emerge by mistake, or part of a figurine will happen by chance because of the direction of a single brushstroke. Robbie might see something completely different when it’s his turn to draw, that’s why our works take on multiple narratives. He’ll add a bit and I’ll add a bit until we end up with a completely unique being.”
Robby and Ed named their 14 paintings after popular female names from the 1980s – Linda, Donna, Paula, Tracy etc. “We like the obscurity of these names, which were highly popular back in the day, but are not so common today. For us, they are the names that define the eighties, an influential era, which has inspired our art,” Robby said. At the end of the interview that the artists gave to Sotheby’s, titled “A Life Less Ordinary. Williams Godrich”, Robby concluded: ”The reason why we are doing this exhibition is because it’s time!”.
To get more information, please visit the official webpage of the exhibition.
You might also be interested in looking at the collection of Richard Ketley’s works.
