In Mattress Mantras, artist David Shillinglaw provides a new way of looking at the sometimes tawdry everyday-domestic, as embodied in the object central to these images—the mattress. Transformed through Shillinglaw’s textual interventions, these objects begin to carry both the meaning of the additional words—playful, philosophical, literary—and a heightened sense of their own histories. Shillinglaw draws our attention to the tension between our domestic and external environments, between objects of use and objects of art, and between our human interactions and our material refuse.

David Shillinglaw is an artist whose practice shifts from drawings and paintings to large-scale murals and installation. David has also worked as an illustrator and designer for a range of clients. Since graduating from Central Saint Martins in 2002 he has exhibited in galleries internationally and has also engaged in a number of community projects and artist residencies.