Rob Davies: Year    Jun 4 - Jun 19, 2008

In his artistic practice Robert Davies began by observing those things closest at hand, the most familiar and intimate parts of the body, and fixing them photographically. In his series of body parts he concentrates on the openings and orifices that connect us with the physical world. More recently his attention has moved further away, to the ‘out of reach’, to the stars that are light years away or maybe already extinct. It isn’t the stars themselves, but their traces, that he seeks to capture. He also made photographic drawings by recording the tail lights of aeroplanes taking off from Heathrow.

This change in emphasis partly came about through a change of place, a move from the city to the country and the new possibilities created by the proximity of his studio. The artist, who has always had a strong feeling for nature is now constantly confronted with the natural world of seasons, with the English countryside and with the workings of the land, and the animals used to work it. Instead of the diffuseness of the city, a romantic meditative feeling has taken hold.

The artist has made photograms of all the insects (flies, wasps, spiders, beetles) he finds dead or mummified in the dust and webs of his studio. He also uses the discarded malt feathers of hens for this purpose. Some of these pieces bring to mind scientists’ vitrines of the 19th Century, but their arrangement on paper and their lack of any facile system distorts this comparison. I see in Robert Davies a characteristic romantic attitude towards nature that exists particularly in English art and which is manifest in poetry, painting, the art of found objects and photography. This is true for Davies in his oil paintings of animals. These question our uneven treatment of beasts, depending on whether we have them as pets or own them for racing or whether they are used in the business of food production. Also in his river landscapes that record the change in flora, light and atmosphere as the seasons pass, one to another.

He changes from one medium to the next, according to his artistic needs. Painting for example, gives him the possibility to synthesise his observations and attitudes in a way that photography, in its fleeting moments and longer exposures, does not. To dwell on a decision each time you make a mark and then to layer each action, is in stark contrast to the single, irreversible commitment of making a photograph.

This exhibition confronts us with the most varied techniques to produce pictures, but for Davies these are not just an aesthetic process, but also reflect a moral stance. He sets himself apart from contemporary cynicism and avoids using doubt as a central theme. The viewer of this exhibition, faced with so many different artistic strategies, will have to look for the connections, the unity, in a moral category. This search is a process that necessarily challenges the viewer's own paradigms.