Ellie Davies

We are launching 2018 with photographer, Ellie Davies. She is a photographer that brings both an aesthetically alluring quality, as well as fascinating. I encourage you to visit her website (a link is below) to read the individual artist statements, and discover the concepts and process that goes into her work (also see much more of her work). Below is a sample of five different bodies of work, as well as her general artist statement and bio.

STATEMENT

I have been working in UK forests for the past eight years, making work which explores the complex interrelationship between the landscape and the individual. Our understanding of landscape can be seen as a construction in which layers of meaning that reflect our own cultural preoccupations and anxieties obscure the reality of the land, veiling it, and transforming the natural world into an idealization.

UK forests have been shaped by human processes over thousands of years and include ancient woodlands, timber forestry, wildlife reserves and protected Areas of Outstanding Natural. As such, the forest represents the confluence of nature, culture, and human activity. Forests are potent symbols in folklore, fairy tale and myth, places of enchantment and magic as well as of danger and mystery. In more recent history they have come to be associated with psychological states relating to the unconscious.

Against this backdrop my work explores the ways in which identity is formed by the landscapes we live and grow up in. Making a variety of temporary and non-invasive interventions in the forest, my work places the viewer in the gap between reality and fantasy, creating spaces which encourage the viewer to re-evaluate the way in which their own relationship with the landscape is formed, the extent to which it is a product of cultural heritage or personal experience, and how this has been instrumental in their own identity.

Throughout my practice small acts of engagement respond to the landscape using a variety of strategies, such as making and building, creating pools of light, suspending smoke within the space, or using craft materials such as paint and pigment. The final images are the culmination of these interventions. The forest becomes a studio, forming a backdrop to contextualize the work, so that each piece draws on its location, a golden tree introduced into a thicket shimmers in the darkness, painted paths snake through the undergrowth, and strands of wool are woven between trees mirroring colours and formal elements within the space.

These altered landscapes operate on a number of levels. They are a reflection of my personal relationship with the forest, a meditation on universal themes relating to the psyche and call into question the concept of landscape as a social and cultural construct. Most importantly they draw the viewer into the forest space, asking the them to consider how their own identity is shaped by the landscapes they live in.

BIO

Ellie Davies (Born 1976) lives in Dorset and works in the woods and forests of Southern England. She gained her MA in Photography from London College of Communication in 2008.

Davies is represented by Susan Spiritus Gallery in Newport Beach, California, A.Galerie in Paris and Brussels, Sophie Maree Gallery in The Netherlands, Brucie Collections in Kiev and Crane Kalman Brighton Gallery in the UK.

In 2018 Davies looks forward to solo exhibitions at Patricia Armocida Gallery in Milan from 18 January until 15 April 2018, and at A.galerie Brussels in March 2018. Her work will be exhibited for the first time in India in February 2018 at Gallery 1AQ in New Delhi as part of India Arch Dialogue 2018: Moments in Architecture.

Recent solo exhibitions include Into the Woods at The Roe Valley Arts and Cultural Centre in Northern Ireland in April 2017, and at Crane Kalman Gallery in London in the summer of 2016.

In 2017 Stars 8 was awarded both the Fine Art Single Image Winner in the Magnum Photography Awards 2017 and The Celeste Prize 2017 and was exhibited at The Photographers Gallery in London and Bargehouse OXO London in October 2017. Davies was also a Selected Winner in AI-AP’s American Photography 33 (2017) and Landscape Winner in PDN’s The Curator Awards 2016. The six winning artists were exhibited at Foley Gallery in New York in 2016. Her Stars series was also selected for the Aesthetica Art Prize 2016 and received The People Choice Award.

Photo Festivals and Touring Exhibitions include Noorderlicht Photography Festival 2017, The Singapore International Photo Festival 2016, Noorderlicht Photography Festival 2013, Recontres d’Arles 2013 in Arles in France and at China House Malaysia in 2013, and the Singapore International Photo Festival 2012. The Open to Interpretation Landscape Exhibition toured the USA including Gordon Parks Gallery, St Paul, Minneapolis, and Newspace Centre for Photography, Portland, Oregon. Forest Stories Touring Exhibition travelled to The Russian Museum Summer Gardens in St. Petersburg, then to Krasnodar Central Park, Krasnodar, Russia, and to Illinskii Forest Museum, Perm, Russia during 2014.

Interviews and photo features include National Geographic, Lens Culture, The Guardian, Gardens Illustrate, Aesthetica Magazine, The LA Times, Huffington Post, On Landscape, AnOther Magazine, Slate Magazine, FOTO Magazine Poland, The Plus, Sodium Burn, Cercle Magazine France, F-Stop, Mull It Over, Urbanautica Photo Stories, Two Way Lens, Fraction Magazine, and It’s Nice That.

Her work has been featured in Interior Design Magazine USA, Aesthetica Magazine, FOTO, Blow Magazine, Dodho, Doc! Magazine, Lumina Journal, British Journal of Photography, Bear Deluxe, Fuzion Magazine, La Republica Italy, Dazed and Confused, Photo+ Magazine South Korea, Conscientious, Silvershotz, Lens Culture, Art Ukraine, Entitle Magazine, and Le Monde Magazine amongst others.

Publications and cover images include Le Magiciennes de la Terre: L’art et la Nature au Feminin by Virginie Luc published by Les Editions Ulmer Paris in 2017 and Matter and Desirepublished by Chelsea Green, Vermont USA, in 2017. Also, Arboreal, A Collection of New Woodland Writing, published in December 2016 by Little Toller Books, features images and cover by Davies

Also, Into The Woods by Ellie Davies, a self-published photobook made with Bob Books which includes Stars, The Gloaming and Between the Trees series’ in their entirety, with text by Ellie Davies and Miranda Gavin (Hotshoe). And, WUD: Four Walks in the Fictional Woods, a limited-edition hardcover photobook published by Tangerine Press in December 2012, Open To Interpretation: Intimate Landscapes, Published October 2012, and Behind the Image By Natasha Caruana and Anna Fox published by Thames and Hudson in 2012.

Her work is held in private collections in the UK, the US, Central and Eastern Europe, South Korea, Hong Kong, Russia and The United Arab Emirates. WUD: Four Fictional Walks in the Woods has been added to the collections of the National Art Library at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, The Library Project Bookshop, Dublin, The Glasgow School of Art Library, and is stocked in Foyles London.

REPRESENTATION

UK Crane Kalman Brighton Gallery

USA Susan Spiritus Gallery France A. Galerie Paris

Brussels A. Galerie Brussels

Ukraine Brucie Collections Netherlands Sophie Maree Gallery

CONTACT ellie@elliedavies.co.uk http://www.elliedavies.co.uk