Striking Sea Change exhibition now on display at Frankston’s Cube 37

Published on 13 July 2022

Artist Penelope Davis creates jellyfish forms from a collage of components.

Taking the detritus of contemporary technologies and combining these with organic source material such as leaves and seaweed, Davis makes casts in silicone, then uses these casts themselves as forms.

The artist hand sews these ‘skins’ together to create delicate hybrid forms that resemble jellyfish.

Davis’s works reflect on, and embody, a painstaking attempt to recuperate an appreciation for the natural world, our symbiotic relationship with it, and the necessity of our shared future.

Patrons can view Davis’s striking jellyfish forms in the Sea Change exhibition at Frankston’s Cube 37.

Davis was born and lives in Melbourne. She is primarily known as a post-photographic artist creating photographs without a camera.

Her final images are not simple photographs but are cameraless photograms or scans that capture light refracting through transparent resin casts taken from objects such as analogue cameras and old books.

Recent curated exhibitions include Divine Abstraction, Justin Art House Museum (2016), Ex-libris – the book in contemporary art, Geelong Gallery (2014), Perceptions of Space: Justin Collection, Glen Eira City Gallery (2014), Missing Presumed Dead travelling to regional galleries in Tasmania, Queensland and Western Australia (2013), Interieur-Exterieur at Lumas Galleries, Paris (2010), and The Apple Project, AC Institute, New York (2010).

Davis’s work is held in numerous public and corporate collections nationally and internationally, including the National Gallery of Victoria, Artbank, ANZ Bank, DC Design China, Victorian College of the Arts, City of Port Phillip, BHP Billiton, University of Melbourne and private collections within Australia, USA, Europe, China and Japan.

Catch Sea Change at Frankston Arts Centre’s Cube 37 venue, Davey St, until Saturday, 27 August. Sea Change can be viewed from the street front 24/7.

For more information about the artist, click here and for details about Sea Change, please visit https://artscentre.frankston.vic.gov.au/Whats-On/Art-Exhibitions/Penelope-Davis or phone 9784 1060.

Penelope Davis is represented by MARS Gallery, Melbourne.