Dr David Watkins Essex, United Kingdom
David Watkins is a visual artist whose practice encompasses painting and installation. Based in Southend-on-Sea, Essex, he is a trustee at The Old Waterworks, an artist-run studio and charity. Watkins holds a Professional Doctorate in Fine Art from the University of East London and has studied painting and sculpture at the University of Wolverhampton and the University of Buffalo, New York State.
In 2024, Watkins was awarded the Studio 459 Residency, a co-living artist residency in central Portugal; in 2023, Watkins was commissioned for Storm Warning, a collaborative project between Focal Point Gallery in Southend-on-Sea and Newlyn Art Gallery & The Exchange in Penzance. This project raised awareness of the impact of the climate crisis on coastal communities in South Essex and Cornwall, examining how art can mediate environmental and societal challenges. Similarly, his sculpture Sensing Precarity filled the StoneSpace Gallery in Leytonstone, exploring society’s obsession with unsustainable growth. Through a structure that builds and collapses under its own weight, the work mirrors the cyclical failures of progress and renewal, creating a poignant reflection on societal and ecological resilience.
Watkins’ work has been exhibited widely in the UK and internationally, including France, Germany, Finland, and Senegal. In 2016, he participated in the Dakar Biennale OFF through Tuki Artiste Workshop International, collaborating with artists and musicians across Senegal and exhibiting at Atelier Résidence Tripano, Mbour. His earlier projects include "The Butler’s Portion" (2015), a week-long residency at Focal Point Gallery, and a commissioned series of drawings for the Essex Network of Artists Studios, mapping the creative networks across the region.
Rooted in themes of connection and interdependence, his work investigates the hidden networks that underpin modern society, ranging from the global supply chains shaped by digital infrastructures to the ancient symbiotic mycorrhizal networks of the Wood Wide Web. These themes provide a rich foundation for exploring the intersections of art, ecology, and technology. Watkins uses the Wood Wide Web as a metaphor for rethinking human and nonhuman agency, drawing parallels between organic systems of interconnection and the structures of the World Wide Web. His work highlights the adaptability and resilience of natural systems as a lens to critique the fragility and inequality embedded in human-made infrastructures.
Watkins’ practice combines the embodied nature of digital and ecological networks, interrogating the materiality of infrastructure systems that often go unnoticed until they fail. While infrastructure promises progress and growth, its absence or collapse exposes societal precarity and the fragility of modern life. This tension between aspiration and failure is central to Watkins’ work, which seeks to illuminate the nuanced relationships between art, technology, and ecological systems in a world increasingly defined by uncertainty.
