MARTIN J TICKNER
CREATIVE / ARTISTIC DIRECTOR
GIVE ME STRENGTH
DAVID HUGHES and PAUL DAVIS
DAVID HUGHES and PAUL DAVIS embarked on a collaboration involving photography, painting and everyday objects constructed with the intention of making something beautiful out of the banal. They wanted to recreate that moment when light, reflection and shadow can thrill and corrupt the eye at the same time.
Photographic still-lifes are framed along with two sheets of glass daubed with paint and markers. Shadows are cast as items peek through swirls of colour. Small plastic animals look lost, balloons become abstract, scourers attempt to become a rainbow. Freed from the everyday, these objects take on a different meaning. The images are fleeting views of the everyday fracturing it into a series of broken visual narratives appealing to both individual and collective stories.
"David Hughes & Paul Davis: 'Give Me Strength’ resplendently corrupts the eye"
The world of art and photography have once again come together, with an avant-garde exhibit created by long-time industry natives, David Hughes and Paul Davis.
Hughes, a fashion photographer whose portfolio boasts work created for the likes of Marc Jacobs and Louis Vuitton, has also incited reverence in response to his personal projects, including a candid series depicting the Cammell Laird Shipyard in Merseyside, following its closure after 164 years.
Hughes latest undertaking, which reveals another aspect of the photographer's varied lexicon, is titled, Give Me Strength, and was created in collaboration with multi-media illustrator and artist, Paul Davis.
Davis' work has long focused on the eccentricities of life; with deep rumination on the human condition seeping into his seemingly conspicuous works.
The exhibition held at Whitechapel's GALLERY46, focuses on everyday objects constructed with the intention of making something beautiful out of the banal, and sees the combination of Hughes' striking photography and Davis' penchant for the bizarre. According to the press release, the pair wished to, "recreate that moment when light, reflection and shadow can thrill and corrupt the eye at the same time."
The pieces, which depict the likes of a plastic hotdog perching on a bathroom radiator and a precariously placed balloon, are made 3D through their framing by two sheets of glass daubed with paint and markers.