PAUL DAVIES

Inner Landscapes

13 Oct 2026 – 31 Oct 2026

The work of Paul Davies characteristically explores the relationship between photography, collage and painting, blurring the distinction between documentation and fabrication, reality and the imagined. His works present a candy–coloured vision of modernist domestic architecture and landscapes, overlaid, interrupted and indeed, decorated, by cutouts made from cut up photographs taken by the artist of architectural sites. Davies’ use of these forms in his compositions transforms seemingly realistic representations of (almost) recognisable modernist homes into fantastical realms, constructed from an array of fragmented parts.

In the artist’s new body of work, Inner Landscapes, the focus shifts from the facades and interiors of modernist houses to the backyard view of these glamourous homes – to the cabana (or the rearview of the house overlooking this vista) and the pool – essentially, places of leisure; occasionally private but also designed for show and entertaining. Within these spaces of privilege, where the anxieties of contemporary life are forgotten (if only for a short while), boundaries are blurred and the straight lines and comforting order of modernism are slowly dissolved. With mid-century American Case Study Houses as his starting point, Davies deliberately distances the viewer from the house and its surrounds, using the act of collage to play with different notions of perspective – both our experience of perspective when looking at the composition of one of his paintings and the unique perspectives we each bring to the work itself.

In paintings such as Forest I and Frozen Modular (both 2026) the houses are set low on the horizon, allowing for sky-filled compositions replete with vertical tree-like elements and their jittering reflections. Nothing quite lines up: rather than being of the natural world, some tree forms create triangular spaces that seem to move in and out across the image or repeat like printed shapes. Despite our desire for these homes and what they signify, all is not right. For Davies, the anxieties of modern life simmer just below the surface of these works, whether it be the current housing crisis, our climate predicament or the perils of AI. It’s simply a matter of perspective.

- Kelly Gellatly, 2026