Creative Spaces’ LAB-14 Studio Artist-in-Residence, Penelope Davis will present Swarm – an ethereal installation of jellyfish like creations on Wednesday 14 December 2016.
Responding to issues of sustainability and climate change, Swarm sees Davis taking the detritus of contemporary technologies and combining these with organic source material such as leaves and seaweed. Selections of these materials are cast using silicone and then hand-sewn together to create forms that resemble jellyfish. The resulting swarm is displayed as an installation of beautiful semi-transparent, suspended forms.
Swarm reflects on, and embodies, a painstaking attempt to recuperate an appreciation for the natural world, the symbiotic relationship with it, and the necessity of a shared future.
‘I’m interested in intertwining man made products of human overconsumption with organic forms’, says artist Penelope Davis. ‘I find all sorts of objects like cheap bottles, electrical plugs and detritus and then bring in things found from the natural environment. The residency has also allowed me the capacity to work full-time and work with a lighting designer and therefore has given me the capability to expand upon my vision.’
Penelope Davis was born and lives in Melbourne. Davis is primarily known as a post-photographic artist creating photographs without a camera. Her final images are not simple photographs but are camera-less photograms or scans that capture light refracting through transparent resin casts taken from objects such as analogue cameras and old books.
Davis has exhibited extensively throughout Australia and overseas.
Her work is held in numerous public and corporate collections nationally and internationally, including the National Gallery of Victoria, Artbank, ANZ Bank, DC Design China, Victorian College of the Arts, City of Port Phillip, BHP Billiton, University of Melbourne and private collections within Australia, USA, Europe, China and Japan.
Swarm, Wednesday 14 December, 4-6pm at LAB-14 Carlton Connect Initiative, 700 Swanston St, Carlton. This event is free.
Swarm is a Creative Spaces LAB-14 residency, supported by the Creative Spaces and Arts Grants Programs of City of Melbourne.
