DAVID RICKARD

New Zeland, 1975



 

 

Opening 15 November 2025 at 12:00 noon
15 November 2025 - 15 January 2026
Tuesday - Saturday 1:00 pm - 6:00 pm
GMR, Giudecca 800 Q, Venice

The Michela Rizzo Gallery is pleased to present Boulder, the group exhibition that will conclude the exhibition series at the former brewery site. The exhibition, which will open on Saturday 15 November 2025 at 12:00, will feature a dialogue between the work of Hamish Fulton and that of Matthew Attard, Ivan Barlafante, Michael Höpfner, Francesco Jodice, Ryts Monet, Maurizio Pellegrin, Cesare Pietroiusti, David Rickard, Antonio Rovaldi, Mariateresa Sartori, Claudio Tesser and Silvano Tessarollo.

Boulders is inspired by the work Boulder by Hamish Fulton, a British artist who has made walking an artistic language and an act of awareness. Based on direct experience of the landscape and a radical conception of the relationship between art and nature, Fulton's work becomes the starting point for a choral and intergenerational dialogue around the symbol of the boulder, an emblem of strength, permanence and memory of the landscape.

Within this horizon, the artists in the exhibition are arranged according to their varying degrees of proximity to Fulton's thinking. Michael Höpfner and Antonio Rovaldi share his experiential and meditative approach more directly: both investigate walking as a means of knowledge and immersion in the landscape, restoring its physical and inner dimensions through drawings, photographs and installations.

More lateral but deeply akin in poetic tension are Mariateresa Sartori, Matthew Attard and Ivan Barlafante, who translate their relationship with nature into languages of perception and thought. Sartori presents a large installation created using the frottage technique, dedicated to the materials of stones and sand, accompanied by a book that intertwines artistic vision and scientific observation. Attard, through drawing and the use of a pen plotter, transforms three-dimensional scans of boulders into graphic tracings that blend digital precision and manual intervention, exploring the limits of perception and image.

Around these nuclei are gathered artists who, while starting from different languages and perspectives, broaden the reflection on the link between man, nature and space. David Rickard explores the material and perceptual relationships between architecture and the environment; Ryts Monet, Maurizio Pellegrin, Cesare Pietroiusti and Francesco Jodice offer conceptual and narrative visions that open up the theme of landscape to new cultural and social geographies. In particular, Jodice presents a large-scale work from the WEST project, a journey through cities born during the gold rush and now abandoned, in which the landscape becomes an archive of utopias and failures.

Silvano Tessarollo and Claudio Tesser present works in which nature reveals itself in its fragile concreteness, between memory, time and transformation. The exhibition will centre on two wall paintings by Hamish Fulton, Glacial Boulder and Revisiting The Boulders, which will occupy a significant part of the space, giving shape and breath to the entire project.

With Boulder, the Michela Rizzo Gallery concludes an important season of its journey on the Giudecca, entrusting the image of the boulder – solid and immobile but at the same time shaped by time – with the task of preserving the memory of a shared place and time. A landing place that is also a threshold: the last step before a new direction.

David Rickard (New Zealand, 1975) is a New Zealand artist living in London. His previous studies in architecture have had a strong impact on his artistic practice, including the study and interest in materials and spatial dimensions in his work. Through research and experimentation, David Rickard's work seeks to understand what the current perception of the physical world is and when it is far from what we call reality.

His most recent exhibitions include: AETHER/ETERE, GMR Venezia, Intension, CØPPERFIELD, Londra UK (2024); Urban Mining, Pangaea Sculptors Centre, Coventry University, UK, (2024); Sistema Tempo, MoCA, Brescia (2023); Throwing Dice in the Dark, GMR2, Michela Rizzo, Mestre (2023); SESMIC, Giant Art Space, UK (2023); Traces of a Cathode, S1 Artspace, UK (2023); In the Air, The Wellcome Collection, London, UK (2022); Landfall, CØPPERFIELD, Londra UK (2022); (in) visible fields, Galleria Michela Rizzo, Venice (2022); Inaspettatamente (Unexpectedly), Cloud Seven, Frederic de Goldschmidt Collection, Bruxelles, Belgium (2021); Brief Encounters 21, Lustwarande, Netherlands (2021); A Circle Called Zero, No Lugar, Quito, Ecuador (2021); Feuilleton, MACRO Rome and Spoleto (2021); Mountain Scenarios, Museo Nazionale della Montagna, Torino (2021) RESET: Instructions to begin in a new present, TACA, Palma di Maiorca, Spain (2021); Foreign Bodies, CØPPERFIELD, London UK (2020);LUCHT/AIR, Museum Kranenburgh, Netherlands(2020); Echoes from the Sound Barrier, Ashburton Art Gallery, NZ (2019-20); ₡URR€₡ ¥, NOME, Belin (2019); Futuruins, Palazzo Fortuny, Venice (2018); AND A 124, Castlefield Gallery, Manchester, UK (2017); Het Zalig Nietsdoen, Kranenburgh Museum, Netherlands (2017); Not Really Really, The Frederic de Goldschmidt Collection, Bruxelles, Belgio (2016);O, CØPPERFIELD, London, UK (2016);A Bag of Atoms, Balzer Projects, Basilea (2016); Open Forest, The Jerwood Space, London, UK (2016); Flags, Serra di Giardini, Venezia (2015); Alchemy, State of Change, NEST, The Hague, Netherlands (2014); All Vertical Lines Intersect, Galleria Michela Rizzo, Venice (2013); Intersections, Weizmann Institute, Tel Aviv (2012); Displacements, Galleria Michela Rizzo, Venice (2012); Round the Clock, 54th Venice Biennale, Venice (2011); Beyond Ourselves, The Royal Society of Science, London, UK (2011).

David Rickard's work has been featured in articles and interviews in The New York Times, The Times, The Independent, Frame,Kunstbeeld, Drome and Flash Art.

 

david-rickard.net