CATALOGUE

Vent is a solo exhibition of new paintings by Amanda Davies, curated by Eliza Burke. Installed across four rooms of The Barracks at Willow Court, the exhibition is a response to the architectural and institutional histories of the site and an exploration of psychosomatic phenomena through painting and installation. Based on correspondence between Davies and Burke over the course of a year, Vent is the result of shared interests in psychosomatic forms of expression, uncomfortable modes of embodiment and unquiet spaces. The exhibition explores the materiality of the heritage-listed Barracks through a complex series of works highlighting thresholds between psychological and material states.

Davies’ paintings are renowned for their unsettling qualities, their evocation of the ‘unspeakable, uncomfortable, unpredictable, transgressive other – an unheimlich haunting’ (Bett Gallery). Technically and conceptually complex, her works explore slippages between psychological and material phenomena, often using self-portraiture to explore visual and embodied modes of perception. Representing the subject in uncomfortable or awkward positions, sometimes with bodily appendages or in different states of consciousness, Davies’ works propose a fluidity between subject/object boundaries and unexpected transgressions that compound their affective force.

In Vent, Davies turns her attention to Willow Court, home to the first purpose-built asylum in the Australian colonies. Only closing in 2001 after a long history of health service in Tasmania, Willow Court has recently evolved as an arts and culture precinct led by Derwent Valley Arts and supported by Salamanca Arts Centre and the Derwent Valley Council. Vent is installed in The Barracks gallery, a suite of four heritage-listed rooms, formerly the old wards of the hospital with much of their original structure and fixtures still in-tact. Davies’ works revision the vents of the buildings as frames for each painting, highlighting complex relationships between interior and exterior spaces and ideas about what we see and don’t see in institutions. The exhibition is a powerful response to the building as both archive and body, contributing new perspectives to discussions about asylum architecture, histories of health, and contemporary painting in Australia.

Shortly after opening Vent in September 2022, the approach of the exhibition was challenged by some members of the local community. The artists’ full response to this commentary is here.

Vent is assisted through Arts Tasmania and Derwent Valley Arts in association with Salamanca Arts Centre and supported by the Derwent Valley Council.

Amanda Davies is represented by Bett Gallery.

EXHIBITION TITLE
VENT

ARTIST
AMANDA DAVIES

VENUE
THE BARRACKS ARTS CENTRE
NEW NORFOLK

DATES 
SEPTEMBER 10-25, 2022

WORKS
ROOM SHEET & LIST OF WORKS

REVIEW
ANDREW HARPER