Elm

Location

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

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’.
At first glance, this artwork looks like a relatively straightforward painting of a book, with its shadows thrown on the pale green ground of the painting. Titled Elm, the eponymous tree has been painted by Davis onto the book cover, which itself is notably without a textual title. By having an image on the cover of an object that we would normally associate with text, this work speaks to the realm of ideas and to the opening up of the imagination.
Davis has said she enjoys ‘creating the world in which I can play out dramas or discover them as I paint’ The elm is a motif Davis has used often in her work since she associates the tree with loss and nostalgia: much of the elm population in Britain was wiped out with Dutch Elm disease in the 1970s and the tree, once a characteristic feature of Britain’s landscape and paintings of it, appears as a ghostly image on the cover of this book – its stories perhaps within the pages of the object. Talking about her paintings of books, Davis says: ‘I like that books could be seen as relics, something that is being superseded, but actually at the same time we keep returning to material things. We can’t let go of them even when they are obsolete.’

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

Elm

Date

2022

Medium

oil on panel

Dimensions

height: 30.0 cm; width: 20.0 cm

Acquisition

Purchased from Division of Labour, March 2022

Provenance

Division of Labour, from whom purchased by UK Government Art Collection, 22 March 2022

GAC number

19049