[DAILY NEWS..] - David Robilliard

ROBILLIARD, David.
[DAILY NEWS..]
Original artist postcard work. B&w text on card [105 x 145mm] printed to one side only. Numbered as 271 in a limited edition of 300 copies only. Signed by the artist in red pen. [London]: Birch & Conran Fine Art, 1988.

A postcard edition by artist David Robilliard (1952-1988) featuring three of his characteristic bittersweet poems. This series was published by Birch & Conran as A Box of Poems following the release of Robilliard's second volume of poetry Swallowing Helmets in 1987. Robilliard first initiated the postcards as a piece of mail art printed in letterpress by art dealer Paul Conran and sent out to a small group of friends.

This postcard series was released in 1988, the year of the artists' death at age 36, as a result of HIV/ AIDS. While Robilliard would move into painting canvases that he called 'poem paintings' the use of witty, instinctive texts continues in a painted form. Robilliard's initials or signature, as seen here in the postcard edition, would also become an integral part of his painted artworks.

The texts on this postcard reads:


DAILY NEWS
First light crawls through the window
answers to the name of Dawn
the night gallops away with its mares

DOUBLING UP
I thought you were having
a Batman and Robin relationship
but I realize now its more like
Laurel and Hardy

The LIFE OF A WART
consists mostly of hanging around