David Cochrane’s video based practice focuses upon process-led enquiries into memory, time and audience expectation. His works use aspects of durational performance to delay their reading while subverting audience expectations and preconceived notions.

To Escape From The Sun brings together one hundred narrators reading from Albert Camus’ 1942 novel 'L’etranger' (The Outsider). Through the assemblage of collective storytelling the narrative is fragmented and reassembled in its original order, emphasising the relevance of Camus’ focus on the individual. Each unrehearsed recital is imbued with personal significance, inviting the viewer to engage and disengage throughout this prolonged and intimate consideration of subject and text.
With kind thanks to Susan Gladwin for her permission to reproduce her writing about 'To Escape From The Sun’.

David Cochrane was born in 1980 in Manchester, UK. He completed BA Fine Art at Manchester School of Art in 2003 and is currently studying for MFA at Chelsea College of Art and Design. Solo exhibitions include To Escape From The Sun, Deleadus Gallery, London, and Littlemissmicks, Berlin, both in 2008. Selected group exhibitions include: Condensation 09, Bodhi Gallery, London; Papercut, St. Lukes Agency, London; MyFest, The Foundry, London; Everybody’s Some Of The Time, Somebody’s All Of The Time, London; Observing The Endgame, Floating ip, Manchester; Hans Brinker Trophy, Hans Brinker Hotel, Amsterdam; and Thermo 03, Lowry Art Gallery, Manchester. Cochrane has recently been selected for New Contemporaries 2009, and in 2008 received AHRC funding for postgraduate studies.

BMCA's Curatorial Approach: Trade City

For Trade City the BMCA are proud to present To Escape From The Sun by David Cochrane, young artist from Manchester who now lives and works in London. To Escape From The Sun was made between 2005 and 2008, and features one hundred narrators reading from Albert Camus’ 1942 novel 'L’etranger' (The Outsider).  Cochrane’s intention was an attempt to disrupt a narrative without changing the words or the order of them, whilst alluding to the broken dialogue of the passer by on the street, inviting the viewer to engage and disengage throughout this prolonged and intimate consideration of subject and text. In the context of Trade City the work acts as a metaphor for the activity of exhibiting on periphery of an event such as the Manchester International Festival.