Musing with Materials - DavisThomas

 

Merleau-Ponty’s theory Phenomenology of Perception identifies the Body 

as the primary site of knowing the world and that as such all consciousness is

perceptual and subjective. Perception is not the unchanging object as intimated 

by the natural sciences, but rather an ever fluctuating intertwinement of the 

consciousness, the world, and the human body; perceiving is a intricately and 

mutually engaged dance. 

 

 

Musing with Materials is an exhibition that weaves subliminal connections between material qualities, aesthetics and association. Drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s theory: Phenomenology of Perception, this exhibition intends to expose our corporeity process of perception and personalised meaning-making systems. 

 

Through creating an oscillation between perceivable yet contradictory sensitivities in the works, DavisThomas facilitate an awareness of the act of perception. Perception being: the combination of our sensorial responses with our inner-dialogues - our own unique libraries of association and meaning. For instance Spring-Still balances on the precipice between containment & release; the artwork’s materiality both allures and repels the viewer with beauty & threat. Poised-Steel is suspended in a state of fluidity, captured by contingent forces. This is an artwork in a state of equilibrium under tension. 

 

This collection of works is concerned with modalities of viewing and the physicality of perception. Through the ceaseless & hypnotic dispensing of paper, Unravel transfixes the audience in the interstice of an endless liminal transformation. A sublime state that both draws the viewer into a greater awareness of seeing and conversely repels them through a lack of event or conclusion.  Wavelength extends the act of seeing beyond the physical stimuli to the fleeting and ephemeral.  Wavelength uses the moiré effect to create intangible moments of seeing that draws the viewer’s attention to the act of seeing as a sensorial experience. 

 

Through triggering our subliminal connection between the physical world and our corporeal processes of perception DavisThomas explore both the fluidity of meaning and the fleeting ephemeral experience of viewing.  

 

 

 

Chose your own meaning – it’s all subjective anyway.