Kate Davis
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Disgrace, II, 2009
Born: 1977, New Zealand
Based: Glasgow
Represented by: Sorcha Dallas, Glasgow; Galerie Kamm, Berlin
Born in New Zealand in 1977, Davis completed her BA Printmaking in 2000 and an MPhil in Art in Organisational Contexts in 2001 at Glasgow School of Art. In 2006 Davis had a solo show at the Kunsthalle, Basel and the following year was selected for Art Now, Tate, London. Selected group exhibitions include: ‘If I can’t dance I don’t want to be part of your revolution’ (De Appel, Amsterdam); ‘Poetical Political’ (Simon Lee, London); ‘Like Leaves’ (Tanya Bonakdar, New York), and ‘The Object is the Mirror (Part II)’ (Wilkinson, London). More recently Davis has presented solo shows at Galerie Kamm, Berlin and Sorcha Dallas, Glasgow and participated in the group shows ‘Concrete Shadows’ (The Changing Room, Stirling), ‘Don’t Expect Anything’ (Francesca Minini, Milan) and ‘The End of the Line’ at MIMA, Middlesborough (organised by Hayward Touring). In 2008 Davis was awarded residencies at Cove Park, in Argyll and Bute, Scotland and the Banff Arts Center, Canada and presented a solo show at Sorcha Dallas. Davis will be on a residency at Camden Arts Centre from January to February and will collaborate with Feminist artist Faith Wilding in a special project for the Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art in 2010 to be shown at the CCA, Glasgow. 2010 will also see published the first major monograph on the artist with texts by Caoimhin MacGiolla Leith and Jason Bowan, supported by the CCA, Glasgow and the Scottish Arts Council. Davis lives and works in Glasgow.
Davis’ meticulous drawings are the foundation of an exceedingly articulate practice in which sculptural objects, book works, photography and film come together in carefully considered dialogue. Her installations are the thoughtful culmination of large bodies of work that explore intimate and insightful positions. Davis investigates the legacy of artists such as Carl Andre, Barbara Kruger, Faith Wilding, Willem de Kooning and Franz Gertsch. Often referring to specific artworks, she astutely reconfigures our presumptions by bringing her own carefully considered relationships with the work into play. Throughout Davis’ visual practice there is a decisive yet subtle connection to the body, no matter how fragmented it may appear. This loosely autobiographical inclusion commands a refreshing and stark insight into her references and invites the viewer to engage with the work out-with of an authoritative sphere.
Davis’ often photographs staged scenarios creating enigmatic composition with a meaningful critical orientation. Frequently, these performative moments become the basis for a series of drawings. The drawings themselves are intimate, bold and refined. In them we encounter a mix of everyday detritus, which often intersect with the artist’s own body and become framed by text. These provocative, haunting scenarios appear throughout Davis’ oeuvre and her choreography is embedded with a knowingly abandon. Davis’ films are a natural extension of this elegant appropriation and her persuasive use of the medium embraces the dynamism of movement in her work.
