With a practice spanning painting, film and photography, David Griggs investigates the societal underbelly and intangible complexities of the human condition. The Ashtray Reader sees politics, popular culture and personal narrative collide as explosive painterly portraits and emotional renditions.

While portraiture sets the tone here, Griggs deliberately disrupts the much-loved genre. Self-portraits of the artist in various characterisations sit alongside grotesque representations of Donald Trump and abject meaty bodies that pay homage to Jenny Saville and Francis Bacon. These new works exude a certain tension and otherness: an innate response to emotion through paint. Oscillating between the real and the imagined, the paintings tap into the turbulent social and political conditions of the previous year.

Griggs is perhaps best known for his anarchic approach, often conveyed through intense paintings highly loaded with colour and imagery. His return to more formal oil painting has seen him spend hours in the studio focusing on stillness and technique, habitually painting and smoking cigarettes. As the ashtray overflows, the role of art becomes apparent, the process necessary.