Dedicated Dave is working his way through the alphabet

Gallery Oldham is hosting an exciting new visual exhibition, ‘Dave Ball A to Z: The First Seven Years’ by Swansea-born artist Dave Ball.

Featuring thought-provoking work from Dave, this was conceived as a deliberately absurd undertaking, and a mammoth task.

‘A to Z: The First Seven Years’ runs until Saturday, March 2, and is made up of a series of illustrations and photographs that represents the words A to C in the Oxford English Dictionary.

The mammoth piece starts with the word “Aardvark” and goes all the way to “Cyst”.

Dave’s wider project, ‘A to Z’, when fully completed, will be a collection of drawings and images that visualizes every word in the Concise Oxford English Dictionary in alphabetical order.

It’s estimated that around 10,000 visualisations will need to be made to complete all the 26 letters and Dave has said the project will likely take a monumental 35 years to complete.

In 2011, Dave embarked on the journey after he wanted to make art about the world and its surroundings.

He soon realised that that the world was frustratingly large and complex, so he had to think of other ways to carry out his passion.

Each piece of artwork introduces a new conceptual parameter or media restriction, whilst adhering to the basic parameters of the overall work.

Residents can now view the first seven years of his hard work (letters A, B and C) at Gallery Oldham.

The first, piece, ‘Aardvark to Axle’ (2011-13), consists of 461 drawings of the “A” words.

The second, ‘Babble to Byte (from Memory)’ (2013-14), features a sequence of 479 “B” drawings produced entirely from memory and finally, ‘All the Cs (Through the Lens of My Camera)’ (2014-18), features 831 photographs of words beginning with “C”.

Councillor Paul Jacques, Cabinet Member for Education and Culture, said: “This exhibition is a brilliant opportunity for visitors and residents to explore the work of such passionate and motivated British artist.

“Dave’s work will appeal not just to a local audience, but to everyone who is involved in creative arts.

“His work is something every artist can aspire to and we invite everyone to come and view this vast project of work.”

“We look forward to the next instalment of his A to Z project.”

For more information about the exhibition please visit: www.galleryoldham.org.uk

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