Archive 2008-09
Kate Davis
- Venue: Fine Art Lecture Theatre
- Start: Wed, 22 Apr 2009 11:00:00 BST
- End: Wed, 22 Apr 2009 13:00:00 BST
Drawing on her previous work relating the human anatomy to landscape, Davis has taken her three most significant sites in Grasmere and equated them to the three axes of the body: the head, the heart and the hole.
Head is the cottage where Davis has lived during her residency at the Wordsworth Museum and Art Gallery: her mental space; the place where she sleeps, thinks, dreams. Poetry written across her living room and bedroom windows highlights the interchange between waking thought and sub-conscious feeling. Heart is the boathouse studio: the place where land meets water; where Town End meets lake; where thought work begins to take physical form. The space is gilded, made precious, and lit and warmed by an open fire. A mirrored boat, designed to hold the artist, supine, waits to be filled and pushed out into the water. Hole is Lower Rydal Cave: the entry point into the earth; the highest altitudinal point of the walk and the lowest of the body; wet, dark and hollow; vaginal and powerful.Here, a latter-day Eros is captured by twilight, shooting his arrow into the mouth of the cave.
The work in 3ºW Gallery invites the viewer into these sites conceptually, leading from head to heart to hole, retracing the artist's daily walk from cottage to boathouse to cave. The exhibition investigates female sexuality in a male tradition, and how environment influences the human. The combination of built and natural landscapes explores the relationship between the made and the found; the analysed and the intuited. The results are contemporary, but resonate with mythological, classical and Romantic influences, turning the experience of the individual artist into something universal and timeless.