Ellie Davies

Ellie Davies follow British, born 1976

Lives in Dorset, United Kingdom

Projects/Portfolios

The Dwellings, 2012

Introduction

DWELLINGS, 2012

The Dwellings series explores the artist’s changing relationship to built structures within the forest landscape, developing on previous work to examine the notion that we use landscape to find a sense of our own identity. Landscape can be seen as a cultural construct, obscured by layers of meaning that reflect our own cultural preoccupations and anxieties. Can we learn about ourselves by considering how we have come to see and make landscapes, as a result of our material needs, and the way this has shaped our relationships with the land?

The woodland Dwellings are made using a variety of traditional and improvised building techniques and created from materials gathered from the forest floor. Once completed, the structures function as signifiers of a creative process in which the artist inscribes and places herself temporarily and non-invasively within the forest landscape. These nest-like structures, reminiscent of the fairytale hovel, are a form of mark-making and explore the process of building in order to provide shelter, sanctuary, seclusion, and play.

The creation of each Dwelling elicits a childhood pleasure in building and making. The process ties the artist to the structure with a familiarity derived from being its creator, and brings with it a sense of ownership and territory; but this relationship is short-lived.

After a period of time each structure is revisited and photographed. The Dwellings take on their own personal identity, presence and potential, becoming inexplicably transformed into something independent from the creator, perhaps lonely, sometimes melancholy, and alien to the maker. Each has existed in the woods over a prolonged period of time, evading destruction, remaining in wait, possibly used by others. While some still seem newly made, others have begun to disintegrate and lose their form and function, the delineation between the structure and the woodland beginning to blur.

Any sense of ownership ceases to exist when construction of the Dwelling is completed; it then becomes part of the forest, and an entity in its own right. During the period of absence it is transformed into a shrine or totem of a past activity, and in doing so takes on a subtly threatening otherness in its vacancy; a persona that is both disturbing and intriguing to its creator.

Stars, 2014

Introduction

Between the Trees, 2014

Introduction

Publications

Statements

Artist Statement
I have been working in UK forests for the past seven 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 idealisation.
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.

Process Statement
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 contextualise 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.

Biography

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, Sophie Maree Gallery in The Netherlands, Brucie Collections in Kiev, Art Gemini in Singapore and Crane Kalman Brighton Gallery in the UK.
The Roe Valley Arts and Cultural Centre in Northern Ireland will host a solo exhibition of her images in April 2017.
Recent shows include Into The Woods at Crane Kalman Gallery in London during July and August 2016 and The Singapore International Photography Festival 2016 Beauty World Exhibition.

She was selected 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 selected for the Aesthetica Art Prize 2016 and received The People Choice Award.

A. Galerie Paris showed Davies’ work in Outside, a group landscape exhibition at their Paris gallery. The exhibition then travelled to Art Paris and on to A.Galerie Brussels. In the UK Crane Kalman Gallery Brighton took her work to Photo London 2016. Between the Trees 14 was included in The Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition 2015 and Stars showed at The Sophie Maree Gallery in The Hague in early 2015. Davies’ work was selected for the Royal Photographic Society’s 158th Annual Print Exhibition (2015) and was awarded ‘Selector’s Choice’ by Louise Clements (Director of Quad Festival, Derby).

Other solo exhibitions include Into the Woods at The Richard Young Gallery in London (2012), Come with Me at The Print House Gallery in London (2012), Smoke and Mirrors at 10GS London (2011), and Ellie Davies New Landscape at Bruce Collections, Kiev in Ukraine (2011). Group exhibitions include The Art Gemini Prize Exhibition at TriSpace Gallery in London, Uncertain States at Four Corners Gallery in London, and The Open West 2014 at The Wilson Gallery in Cheltenham.
Photo Festivals and Touring Exhibitions include The Singapore International Photo Festival 2016, The Noorderlicht 2013 Photofestival in The Netherlands, Recontres d’Arles 2013 in Arles, France and China House, Malaysia in 2013, and the Singapore International Photo Festival 2012. In late 2012 the Open to Interpretation: Intimate 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.

Davies was recently awarded Gold in the Fine Art Landscape category of the PX3 Awards 2015, and First Place in the 2014 Kontinent Awards Fine Art Projects Category, Top 50 in the Barcelona International Photography Festival, First Place in the 2014 Art Gemini Awards, and two Honourable Mentions in the Moscow International Photography Awards 2014. She also received an Honourable Mention from the jurors of Inside Out 2014 at PH21 Gallery in Budapest.

She has recently been interviewed for National Geographic, The Guardian, Aesthetica Magazine, The LA Times, Huffington Post, 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, Fraction Magazine’s 50th Issue, Lumina Journal, Bear Deluxe, Fuzion Magazine, La Republica Italy, Dazed and Confused, Photo+ Magazine South Korea, Conscientious, Silvershotz, Lens Culture, Art Ukraine, Entitle Magazine, Le Monde Magazine, and The London Independent Photography Selected Artist Showcase.

Arboreal, A Collection of New Woodland Writing published in December 2016 by Little Toller Books features images and cover by Davies. Other books include Into The Woods, 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). Also, 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.