Grenville Davey
Works available
The House
2007
Floor dish, Steel and oak
63 × 220 cm (diameter) / 2ft � x 7ft3 ins (diameter)
Ps & Qs
2007
Rusted steel
190 × 122 × 118 cm / 6ft2 � x 4ft x 3ft10 � ins
Biography
(1961 - )
Grenville Davey's beautifully finished sculptures are reminiscent of domestic or industrial objects, and are often oddly out-sized and out of context. They seem familiar at first and yet their form is subtly altered, posing questions about the notions of function and purpose, and how we perceive reality. The House, 2007, is a polished steel floor dish with a turned wooden handle, which has industrial as well as domestic associations, and is also suggestive of an oversized curling stone. However it also celebrates the beauty of contrasting materials and surface textures, and the simplicity of pure sculptural form. Ps and Qs is a leaning spindle of twisted steel, balancing on a disc made up of steel letters of the alphabet, its form loosely reminiscent of a sundial.
Grenville Davey was born in Launceston, Cornwall, in 1961. He studied at Exeter College of Art and Design and at Goldsmith's College, London (1981-85). Davey has exhibited regularly both in Britain and abroad, and in 1992 was awarded the Turner Prize at Tate, London in recognition of the development of his work in exhibitions held at Kunsthalle, Bern and Kunstverein Dusseldorf. Grenville currently teaches at the University of East London, while living and running his studio in Essex. His recent exhibition of new works at Canary Wharf, Little Emperor (2008), was his first solo show in London for more than a decade.