Castle

Location

Country: UK
City: England
Place: Manchester, DCMS Hub

Davis uses the medium of painting to reflect on history, culture and her own sense of belonging. The book offers Davis the space to linger her gaze on an object as she renders it in paint, and the process of doing this offers the viewer a sense of an object loaded with meaning. The castle Davis paints on this book cover is itself a powerful image, bringing to mind stories and ideas that could relate, in the words of Davis, to anything from ‘mediaeval England to Disneyland’.
Colour, or rather the idea of colour, is a key part of Davis’s work, and the green used for the backdrop is reminiscent of an earlier time. The use of an image on the cover of the book, combined with the absence of a book title, confounds the viewers’ expectations, leaving us with an enigmatic image of a familiar object. Coupled with the ribbon, which is used invitingly as a bookmark within the book and which suggests that someone is reading it already, we as the viewer are presented with an interrupted narrative, and an almost visceral desire to open the book in order to see or to read what is inside.
This work is part of a series of books painted by Angelina May Davis, for whom the book is many things: a stage prop, a relic, and a simple object with slabs of colour that are easily abstracted in a painting. The book also points to the literary idea of suspending disbelief, which, Davis observes, ‘allows you to think about things like history and where your ideas and values are formed’.

Angelina May Davis received her BA at Lanchester Polytechnic in Coventry in 1988 and her MA at the University of Central England in 1998. After a series of solo exhibitions at Ikon Gallery Birmingham (1991); City Gallery, Leicester (1992) and MAC, Birmingham (1993) she set her art practice aside to focus on motherhood. In 2014, she began showing work again, at galleries in Birmingham, where she lives, and surrounding areas. She was included in Bloomberg New Contemporaries in 2021, showing at Firstsite, Colchester and South London Gallery. Between 2021-22 Davis returned to art school at Turps Banana and has since had solo exhibitions at Oxmarket Gallery in Chichester, and shown work in group exhibitions at the Whitworth Gallery, Manchester and The Art House Worcester (both 2022).

Places

Subjects

Materials & Techniques

panel, oil, oil paint, oil painting

Artist

Angelina May Davis (1966 - )

Title

Castle

Date

2022

Medium

oil on panel

Dimensions

height: 35.0 cm; width: 28.0 cm

Acquisition

Purchased from Division of Labour, March 2022

Provenance

Division of Labour, from whom purchased by UK Government Art Collection, March 2022

GAC number

19050