Two consistent touchstones of David Gates’s work are its relationship to a particular type of architecture, and the notion of the collecting cabinet. Drawn to industrial and agricultural architecture and infrastructure, he observes a peculiar rightness in many of these structures related to their expediency, function, and immediacy. Their rationality and utility generate a sculptural and aesthetic integrity. Assemblages of mass, volume, balance, and structure, each piece is also wholly functional. Spaces, interiors, ledges, and shelves reveal themselves through doors, tambours, drawers, and fall-flaps. These are modern interpretations of the collecting cabinet. Works are made as unique pieces; precise and deliberate hand-making (including using machinery in non-automated ways) is often the most appropriate way to realise a design.

Traditional construction and joinery methods are selected because of their rightness; intersections of various components are visible. Joinery, beyond being visually interesting itself, indexes what happens below the surface.

Living and working in the UK, David Gates practice combines studio furniture-making with formal research. His work is exhibited and collected internationally. He received the Gold Award at the Cheongju biennale 2015 and was a winner of the Jerwood Contemporary Makers 2010.