Current Exhibition in the Main Gallery at Yering Station – 10 April – 20 May.
JENNY DAVIS — SPACES BELOW
Wallmatter, Oil paint on canvas, 140 x 180 cm
‘Spaces Below’ is a visual and textural descent into the abandoned, the derelict, the vacant and the forgotten. Through her utilisation of forlorn industrial structures, stained and crumbling walls, acts of graffiti, redundant signage, and portals giving access to meandering subterranean systems, Jenny Davis evokes a unique vision at once spare and lavish, material and ghostly. It is a vision that elevates the significance of random marks, stress fractures and other imperfections, while enfolding the viewer in an atmosphere of chromatically gentle and strangely opulent decay. The abstractions that haunt these works are investigations of the many traces that run like hieroglyphs and riddles across the surface of neglected structures.
Davis’s subterranean life began in childhood. Drawn to ‘small spaces’ where she wouldn’t be disturbed, she would play in drainpipes, on vacant industrial sites and in newly constructed buildings, often working discarded materials into makeshift furniture and decorative objects. After an arts residency in Barcelona in 2005 and a visit to France in 2006, Davis steered her arts practice toward spaces reminiscent of those early childhood memories. In researching and documenting understructures, abandoned buildings and marks left behind in the built environment, she found ‘beauty in decay, random marks, aerial perspectives, graffiti and weathered surfaces’. Ever attuned to the narrative and oneiric possibilities of timeworn surfaces, Davis’s latest exhibition creates an altogether seductive immateriality from abrasive mediums such as cement, iron and rust.
Davis’s practice spans twenty-five years and encompasses painting, sculpture, drawing, collage, photography, book arts, textiles, installation‚ video‚ sound and virtual worlds. Her artwork has been exhibited in Australia, Germany, France, Spain, the UK and the US and is represented in numerous private and public collections. She has received awards and residencies both nationally and internationally, and her digital artworks have been projected onto buildings in Times Square, New York and in 2017 at The Venice Biennale 57. “La Biennale di Venezia” in Italy. Davis currently works from her studio in the Yarra Valley region of Victoria, Australia. By DR. Ewen Jarvis 2018
Wallmatter 5, Acrylic, shellac, pigment, sealer on canvas, 122 x 92 cm
For more information please contact
Dr Ewen Jarvis
Curator
Yering Station Art Gallery
38 Melba Highway
Yarra Glen Vic 3775
P + 61 3 9730 0100
M + 0400 894 646
