Fine Art nominee

Stars, 2014.

(Source Material Credit: STScI/Hubble & NASA).

Stars, 2014 explores my desire to find some balance between a relationship with the wild places of my youth, and a pervasive sense of disconnectedness with the natural world.

The Western landscape tradition embodies a pairing that James Elkins calls ‘the subject-object relationship’. Typified by the ‘scenic viewpoint’ or tourist panoramic overlook, we gaze, often through binoculars or telescopes, at wide vistas and dramatic seascapes, awed and overwhelmed. But this landscape experience often alienates the viewer from the scene and, just as the landscape itself becomes an object, a separation arises between them.

Today the majority of people live in urban or semi-urban environments, experiencing the landscape from a distanced position mediated through various media and technology. From this viewpoint the notion of the landscape in all its sensuous materiality, our being within it rather than outside it, seems beyond reach.

Stars, 2014 addresses this distancing by drawing the viewer right into the heart of a forest which still holds mystery, and offers the potential for discovery and exploration. The series considers the fragility of our relationship with the natural world, and the temporal and finite nature of landscape.

BIOGRAPHY

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

Current exhibitions:

'Stars', a solo exhibition at The Sophie Maree Gallery in The Hague runs from 10 January until 28 February 2015.
A. Galerie in Paris is currently exhibiting Davies' work in 'Outside', a group show which runs from 29 January 2015 until 21 March. The show will then travel to Art Paris, and later in the year to A.Galerie Brussels.

Recent solo exhibitions include Into the Woods at The Richard Young Gallery in London, Come with Me at The Print House Gallery in London, Smoke and Mirrors at 10GS London, and Ellie Davies New Landscape at Bruce Collections, Kiev in Ukraine.

She is represented by A.Galerie Paris, Sophie Maree Gallery in The Netherlands, Brucie Collections in Kiev and Art Gemini in Singapore. Crane Kalman Brighton Gallery exhibit her work at London Art Fairs.