Northern Irish performance artist David Sherry has been exploring the outer limits of the absurd for over three decades, and a selection of the resulting video works is gathered at Fruitmarket in Edinburgh in a retrospective of sorts, alongside some new works.
The exhibition was launched with a kind of ‘best-bits live’ event, where David performed a half-hour set of highlights from works on display. Trying to escape from a jumper with the help of some scissors and a slightly unsure audience member, piling a variety of cheap margarines onto his shirt sleeve, also assisted by someone from the audience and painting his face red and shaking cutlery from a drawer.
There’s a surrealist, Monty Python ‘fish slapping dance’ air to some moments. However, the exhibition’s blurb reminds us that David’s work is ‘comedy adjacent’ rather than comedy itself, and it’s clear there’s much more going on here than just playing for laughs.
David Sherry – Sublime review of wrongness: Exhibition of video performance Photo: © Paul Fuller
In one video, he wears a sleeping bag over his body (upside down), with armholes, and stands on a street corner. Filmed from a few angles, we get to watch the reaction, or often non-reaction, of people passing by. In another, he sits on a chair by the side of the road as traffic passes by, with only a few cars slowing to take a closer look.
You may ask, “What does this all mean? Is it about the ‘performance’ or is it about the reactions of those who pass by? Is it a bit of both? As in some videos, he’s performing in a place where there isn’t really anyone to see, so it’s clearly not all just about getting a reaction on the spot.
At the launch, David introduced (drawn by him and made into a cardboard cutout) the very real-life ‘Godfather of AI’, Geoff Hinton. Geoff has declared that due to the rapid advancement of AI, he’s shortened the odds of technology wiping out humanity, essentially, as David puts it, meaning that ‘we, the human species, are fucked’.
David’s response to this is to declare that he intends to bring back balance and ‘increase the odd’, and I think that simple statement could actually be his manifesto – if he ever had something so defined – and there’s plenty of wonderful ‘odd’ on display in this exhibition. Some funny, some just plain strange and definitely no AI.
Words/Photos © Paul Fuller Artlyst 2026
Exhibition: David Sherry Sublime Review Of Wrongness: Exhibition of video and performance. Preview on Friday, 06.02.26, 6–8 pm. Book here. on Saturday, 14.02.26, at 5 pm.