Foreword:
It is a great honour to present The moral meaning of wilderness, an innovative and critically engaging exhibition of recent work by juan Davila, one of Australia’s leading artists. The exhibition represents a radical shift in Davila’s practice, which makes a significant contribution to recent discourses concerning art’s relationship to nature, politics, identity and subjectivity in our post-industrial age.
Juan Davila was born in Chile in 1946 and moved to Melbourne in 1974. He soon established himself as a significant presence on the Australian and international art scene. His work was the subject of a survey exhibition at the Drill Hall Gallery in 2002, a major retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney in 2006 and the National Gallery of victoria in 2007. Davila’s work has featured in a wide range of significant group exhibitions nationally and internationally, including the prestigious Documenta 12 in Kassel, Germany, in 2007.
In The moral...
The one thing historians never do is observe the past. All we observe is the past transformed in some way into history.
Greg Dening, ‘Empowering imaginations’ in Readings Writings, 1998
History as art is a simple explanation for the collection of original works, drawings, sketches, prints and paintings held by the State Library of Victoria. Many appear to represent what was there at the point of their creation – most, in fact, distort that reality by brighter colour, a wider view than is possible for the human eye, or enhancements to make the scene or image more attractive. A more complex explanation is to view these images as documents; evidence that requires interpretation. The small panorama Melbourne 1836 by the obscure bootmaker-cum-artist Hofmann is one example. Painted along with a huge banner version to commemorate the 50th anniversary of European settlement, it is based on an earlier engraving, itself a recollection. It is at the same time nostalgic for humble beginnings and ...
The work of Juan Davila consistently argues for an active role for the artist in society. Born in Santiago, Chile in 1946, Davila moved to Melbourne, Australia in 1974 and has worked between the two countries ever since. As an artist and writer, Davila has taken a gadfly-like position in public discourse in Australia and Latin America, presenting incisive analyses of what he views as the complacency, monotony, and questionable ethics of much contemporary culture. Considered as a whole, Davila’s critical practice has produced a uniquely provocative, powerful and influential body of work.
Juan Davila is the first major solo museum exhibition of Davila’s work, featuring a focused selection of paintings, installations and works on paper from the mid-1970s to the present. It aims to draw out some of the artist’s important concerns over the past thirty years, tracing formal and conceptual developments in Davila’s work over time. Key themes and motifs recur throughout the exhibition...