David Robilliard - the Yes No Quality of Dreams Hardcover

David Robilliard: The Yes No Quality of Dreams is a focused artist monograph on the poet, painter, and performer

David Robilliard, whose work emerged from the vibrant queer and underground art scene of 1980s London. The book was published to accompany the exhibition of the same name at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London, bringing together key works and writings that illustrate Robilliard’s singular voice and aesthetic approach. Rather than presenting a standard retrospective, this volume highlights the intimate interplay between text and image in Robilliard’s practice. It includes reproductions of his paintings and drawings alongside excerpts of his poetry, foregrounding his hybrid mode of expression that resists easy categorization. His works often navigate between personal confession and performative address, blending humour, vulnerability, longing, and self-reflection in ways that challenge conventional boundaries between writing and visual art. The publication also features contextual essays that situate Robilliard’s output within the cultural networks of his time and explore his influence on subsequent generations. Through these perspectives, the book reveals how Robilliard’s art embodies a dream-like register—a quality that oscillates between certainty and absence, presence and disappearance,