David Booth MRSS

David Booth (born 1963) is a British sculptor and multidisciplinary artist with a gallery in Southport. The Royal Society of Sculptors lists him as David Booth MRSS: Member of the Royal Society of Sculptors. His practice extends across sculpture, installation, ceramics, painting, photography and digital work.

In his autobiographical account, Booth describes returning to art through evening classes before beginning part-time Fine Art study at the University of Derby in 2006, alongside full-time employment. He graduated in 2011. This experience of returning to a creative vocation gives a biographical context to his interest in reinvention, although individual works should not automatically be read as autobiographical.

The Royal Society of Sculptors describes an intuitive process in which Booth constructs, interrupts and reassesses forms. Growth, journeys, escape and time recur in this account. Transforming a material allows its earlier associations to remain present while giving it a different expressive role.

Booth’s own statement places particular emphasis on the encounter between a work, its material and its setting. He experiments with unfamiliar sculptural uses for familiar substances, sometimes delaying recognition of what the viewer is looking at. Site-specific work can become temporary and large in scale; the location contributes to its meaning.

His digital practice adds scanning, computer-aided design, 3D printing and augmented reality to these methods. The artist describes combining this research with foundry experience at Castle Arts Foundry and work with Bronzecast to translate digitally developed forms into bronze. His digital portfolio also records projects with QUAD and D-lab and participation in MozEx at Mozilla Festival, selected by curators from Tate and the V&A. These are documented aspects of his wider practice, not evidence that Twist of Fate was digitally designed or cast in bronze.

Hypha Studios documents a more participatory strand through Coastal Creations, a programme proposed around the Southport coast. Sand patterns, dune grasses, casting and digitally altered imagery become starting points for experiments and community workshops. The programme links making with conversation and shared observation.

Booth’s published CV records the Derby City Open Banks Mill Studio Award in 2009, selection for the Broomhill National Sculpture Prize in 2010, a Wirksworth Arts Festival commission in 2010, and a Fine Art degree from Derby in 2011. It also records residencies at Spode in 2011 and Burslem School of Art and Spode in 2012, commissioned through rednile in partnership with the British Ceramics Biennial. These early milestones are presented here as artist-reported chronology.

Selected exhibitions listed by both the artist and Hypha Studios include Fresh Air Sculpture Show in 2017; Life & Death in Nottingham in December 2017 and Derby in February to March 2018; FLUX at Chelsea School of Art in April 2018; and the 10gram Bronze Challenge at Dora House in September 2021. These references describe the artist’s exhibition history. No evidence reviewed establishes that Twist of Fate appeared in any of these exhibitions.

The European Cultural Centre independently lists Booth among the Palazzo Mora participants in Time Space Existence, Venice, 22 May to 21 November 2021. This was an ECC exhibition running alongside the Architecture Biennale. Its catalogue presents The Four Horses, a work connecting the horses of St Mark’s, chess and the need for strategic responses to climate change. The catalogue also acknowledges V21 Artspace among his sponsors. This provides a documented later connection with the organisation involved in the 2018 sale, without establishing any further ownership history for Twist of Fate.