kaz davis

Kaz Davis lives and works on Bidjigal land (Sydney). After studying photography and sculpture, she turned to clay. Kaz completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts at College of Fine Arts UNSW (photography) in 1991 and an Advanced Diploma of Fine Arts at Meadowbank TAFE (sculpture) in 2003. She won the National Emerging Art Prize ceramic award in 2022. Davis has been shortlisted for numerous art prizes including North Queensland Ceramics Awards (2020 & 2022); Meroogal Women’s Art Prize (2020 & 2022); National Emerging Art Prize (2021 & 2022); Little Things Art Prize (2018, 2019 & 2022); Gosford Art Prize (2018); and Woollahra Sculpture Prize (2002). Her work has been in curated exhibitions including Brunswick Street Gallery (Melbourne, 2021), Gallery 152 (York, WA, 2019), and the Salon des Refuses, at SH Ervin Gallery (Sydney, 2003). Davis was awarded an Australia Council grant in 2021 to support the development of new work.

Davis’s practice is focused on recognising the enigmatic qualities of mundane objects that might be considered neglected, broken, and in need of repair. Her photographic observations of the coastal and industrial localities where she lives and works serve as reference points for the development of her layered ceramic surfaces. The work echoes both natural and human-made elements of her immediate environments: tidewrack and remnants of graffiti on concrete walls at a local beach; weathered patinas on storage tanks, shipping containers and freight trucks at Port Botany; and worn paintwork in the built environment near her studio. For Davis, these weathered industrial surfaces have the same affective resonance as that evoked by the natural landscape. She is currently working on a series of ceramic paintings on wall pieces and vessels that embody the processes of weathering, wear and tear that happen due to the forces of natural elements and the passing of time. Layers of engobes, pigments, metal oxides and glaze meld with porcelain and stoneware to develop a complex, evocative surface reflecting the sublimity that can be glimpsed in the remnants of these transient processes. These painterly surfaces and the ceramic wall works are a new direction for Davis and are the culmination of two years of studio research supported by an Australia Council grant. These wall works and vessels contemplate the ineluctable ageing processes that all beings and materials are subject to and issues an invitation to consider the beauty inherent in impermanence. Her first solo show will be at Michael Reid Clay, Northern Beaches in May 2024.