BIOGRAPHY

Dryden Goodwin lives and works in London, his practice is defined by a rich dialogue between drawing, animation, photography, film, printmaking, and sound. He has consistently focused on the human figure, questioning the portrait form, both of individuals and collectives. His work offers a speculative vision that considers the uncertain processes of looking and representing, both in relation to what is experienced and what is seen. He creates work for public spaces, galleries, museums, and cinemas - exploring themes of intimacy, anonymity, proximity, and distance. Working internationally, he has created work in response to different environments and the people found within them, such as airports, hospitals, transport networks, prisons, cathedrals, archaeological excavation sites, public pavements and streets.

Goodwin reflects on the complexities and intricacies of interaction and connection between people, whether they are strangers, family and friends, communities, or citizens and those who govern them. Poised between the everyday and the poetic, he examines both physical and societal infrastructures, while revealing emotional and psychological dimensions and dynamics.

Underpinning his practice is often a desire to find insights, to enquire into the possibilities of empathy and kinship between people, inviting a viewer to experience a heightened sense of someone. By closely observing and responding to the lived experience of a diversity of people, he has considered contexts such as the global air pollution crisis, social inequalities, human rights, care work, scientific and medical practitioners and the search for life on Mars. More recently his works have investigated the dynamics of youth detention centres, disability and people affected by multiple disadvantage. His conversations and collaborations with scientists and clinicians (including an ophthalmic surgeon, oncologists and toxicologists) have informed and shaped many projects, as he details their intricate working processes, strivings and philosophical reflections.

Goodwin endeavours to find an intensity and plasticity of touch in the way he works across different media. Time and focus take on a material presence, whether felt in the drawn marks of captured likenesses on small pieces of paper, the stop-frame exposures within a 16mm film loupe, or the intervention of scratched lines in the emulsion of a large photographic print.

Recurrent motifs in his practice include continual shifts in focus and scale, offering both expansive panoramas as well as intense details. His fascination with attempting to hold moments and experiences, embodies a desire to both preserve and question. He contemplates and magnifies apparent inconsequential encounters, such as passing strangers in public spaces, whilst also chronicling significant historical events, including the huge protest marches in London against the Iraq war or Brexit, as well as documenting the public outpouring after the death of Princess Diana.

He has made high profile public art commissions including Linear, created for Art on the Underground, seen across the London Underground network (2010-12) focused on the community of staff on the Jubilee line. His on-going project Breathe, produced by the arts/science organisation Invisible Dust, engages with the local and global air pollution crisis, its first iteration in 2012 was projected opposite the Houses of Parliament in London, followed by Breathe:2022 (2022) seen at multiple sites next to roads, across London and the UK and Breathe:Lahore (2024) seen at multiple sites across Lahore, for the Lahore Biennale 03 'Of Mountains and Seas' curated by John Tain.

He has created award winning films including Unseen: The Lives of Looking, nominated for Best Documentary Feature at Camerimage, Bydgosz (2016) and CPH:DOX Copenhagen (2015).

Goodwin's work is represented in public collections including - The Museum of Modern Art in New York, The Tate Collection, The National Portrait Gallery, London, The Arts Council Collection, UK and The Science Museum, London.

Goodwin's solo exhibitions include - Alongside, Quad, Derby, (2020), Un-Earth OCAT Xi'an, China (2018), Unseen: The Lives of Looking, Queen's House, Royal Museums Greenwich (2015), Skill, MIMA, Middlesbrough, (2015), Poised, Ferens Art Gallery, Hull, (2014), Coax, Raum mit Licht, Vienna (2011) and Fotoforum West, Innsbruck, Austria (2011), Cast, Hasselblad Foundation, Gothenburg, Sweden (2009) and The Photographers' Gallery, London (2008), Flight Chisenhale Gallery (2006), Dilate New Art Gallery Walsall (2004) and Manchester City Art Gallery (2003), Closer Art Now, Tate Britain (2002), Wait & Drawn to Know, Stephen Friedman Gallery, London (2000).

Group exhibitions include: Our Earth, Salisbury Cathedral (2024), Manifest: Art and Policy, Bloc Projects, Sheffield (2023), In the Air, Wellcome Collection (2022), Work, touring exhibition, including at Quad in Derby / Fermynwoods Contemporary Art / Thrapston, Junction Arts, /Chesterfield / Vivid Projects, Birmingham (2019), Beyond Boundaries Somerset House (2019), CLOSE: Drawn Portraits, Drawing Room, London (2018), Hooked, Science Gallery, King's College London (2018), Typojanchi, International Typography Biennale, Seoul, South Korea (2017), Air: Visualising the Invisible in British Art 1768-2017, Royal West of England Academy, Bristol (2017), 'I want!, I want!' - Art & Technology, selection from the Arts Council Collection, Museum and Art Gallery, Birmingham Museums (2017), Pose, Galerie Springmann, Berlin, Germany (2016), Stories in the Dark, The Whitstable Biennale (2016), Work, Rest & Play: British Photography from the 1960s until Today, curated by The Photographers' Gallery, London, toured China (2015-2016), Poster Art 150: London Underground's Greatest Designs, London Transport Museum (2013), Everything Flows, De La Warr Pavilion (2012), The World in London, curated by the Photographers' Gallery (2012), Exquisite Forest, Tate Modern and Google (2012), Poetry of Motion, National Portrait Gallery, London (2012), Images of the Mind, Moravian Gallery in Brno, Czech Republic (2011), Grand National, Vestfossen Kunstlaboratorium, Norway (2010), London Calling: Who Gets to Run the World, Total Museum, Seoul (2009) also Hanjiyun Contemporary Space, Beijing (2009).

Goodwin is a Professor at the Slade School of Fine Art, UCL, London.

For information (back to 1995) please link to CV