Despite the name, ‘White Donkey For Sale’ isn’t some obscure cattle market in the East End, it’s actually Mathew Sawyer’s inaugural exhibition showing at London’s Rokeby Gallery now until October 22.

Giving the term “Renaissance Man” a new meaning, the singer (famed for his band Mathew Sawyer and the Ghosts) and artist / photographer creates objects, actions and events that oscillate between the public and private, the troublingly personal, and the unsettlingly familiar.

In an ongoing series, which the artist describes as ‘documentary works’, Sawyer records nominal actions through text and photographs combining elements of realism and poetry. From chronicling his life story on a ping-pong ball and then dropping it into a stranger’s house, to experimenting with private and public spaces and the concept of synchronicity and loneliness in ‘Unhappy House’, Sawyer’s art is always intimate, but never over-bearing or over-sharing. Through these actions, Sawyer positions himself as the narrator or storyteller augmenting the sometimes-melancholic drive in his work that radiates through honesty, boldness and involvement.

The presentation of each work is as slight as the intervention itself; Sawyer navigates between the tragicomic and poetic, intimate and universal, conceptual and emotional.

 

White Donkey For Sale is on now until October 22 at Rokeby Gallery, London. For more information, click here. If you’re a fan already, he’s also got a blog and a band.

All images are Copyright Mathew Sawyer and courtesy of ROKEBY