Saturday 18 May 2024
1:45 pm - 3:00 pm
In this talk, Tim will discuss the pieces chosen for the Wakelin Award within the context of his earlier and later work.
Tim Davies studied at Norwich and Canterbury Schools of Art. He has worked in a range of media over the last 30 years, exhibiting and making work in Wales, the UK and internationally. He has received many awards, including the Mostyn Open prize, the Gold Medal in Fine Art at the National Eisteddfod and a major Creative Wales Award. He was the first European artist shortlisted for the Artes Mundi Visual Arts Prize and represented Wales in a solo show at the Venice Biennale in 2011.
The core of his work is rooted in working time- and site-specifically, using 2- and 3-dimensional and performative media. His recent practice is exploring the written, spoken and visualised word.
Regarding the Wakelin Award, which he received in 2005, and for which he was a selector in 2015, he says:
I was delighted to receive the Wakelin Award in 2005. The timing couldn’t have been better. During that particular period, I had been working on various ideas about how culturally we reflect upon those killed in conflict (particularly in the twentieth century) and the related commemorations via Remembrance Day services, monuments and statuary.
At the time of my shortlist for the award I had just started collecting images of memorials and manipulating their digitally reprinted surfaces. Using graphite, I scored repeatedly across them vertically, horizontally and diagonally, an act not of irreverence but certainly an expressive veiling in an attempt to re-represent a subject for closer scrutiny (the anthropologist Joy Hendry had essayed such ideas).
The Parisian piece, which was the start of the European Drawings series, was nervous on my studio wall when the selector for that year, Ann Jones, paid a visit. This was selected as well as a wind-shaken video of my installation of Flags over Solva from 1992. Both pieces remain important for me as they informed different strands of my subsequent practice. The Cadet pieces which grew out of European Drawings formed a central element of my Venice exhibition representing Wales in 2011, and much of my following and current text/spoken word pieces, such as Distant Views, Figures and Portraits have their roots in Flags from all those years before. So, receiving the Wakelin Award, seeing my work on the walls and in the collection of the Glynn Vivian Gallery gave me a boost, a confidence to continue, come what may.
I took this as a lesson when I became a selector myself, that the impact of recognition through a timely award or prize on a burgeoning practice can be crucial for encouragement. It’s a kind of critical appreciation that far outweighs a sale of work – as very nice as that is!
So, I took the selector role very seriously and made a shortlist of three emerging talents, all equally worthy candidates, and with the help of the Wakelin family representatives and the Glynn Vivian, came to a decision. A bonus to this process was an introduction of the shortlisted artists to the panel which resulted in invitations to partake in other exhibitions apart from the award, both for the eventual winner and other short-listed artists.
Personally, I’d like to thank the Wakelin family for generously supporting the artists so far awarded but importantly, as a purchase award, for also augmenting the Glynn Vivian collection.
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