John davis australia

Throughout his career, John Davies has focused on the human head and figure, using a variety of different media. Of his early figures, often cast from life and clothed, he has said, ‘I wanted to make a figure, not like a piece of sculpture, more like a person… I wanted my sculpture to be more like life in the street’.

To create his more recent works, Davies models in clay before casting in polychrome polyester and fibreglass, or bronze, arranging his figures in carefully choreographed relationships. Animals and inanimate objects such as houses also appear, in works whose thematic concerns are always with human experience.

With a career spanning three decades, Davis was one of Australia’s pre-eminent artists, a sculptor who regularly exhibited in Australia and overseas, particularly Japan and the United States. Davis represented Australia at the 38th Biennale of Venice and the Indian Triennale in 1978, and the Osaka Triennale in 1992. His ongoing concern for landscape resulted in numerous site-specific installation works in Australia, Saudi Arabia, Germany, Britain, the United States, Japan and New Zealand. Significant commissions include an installation in the Australian Embassy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Davis’s work is represented in all Australian national and state galleries, most regional galleries, and in private and public collections in Australia and abroad. He was the recipient of various grants, overseas residencies and prestigious awards, including the Comalco Award in 1970 and the Blake Prize for Religious Art in 1993.
Davis drew inspiration from the Australian bush, particularly the Mallee country, the Hattah Lakes area and the Murray River, the artist often returning to thes