LONDON.- Waddington Custot is presenting an exhibition of new paintings by British artist Ian Davenport, shown in the UK for the first time. The works presented in the exhibition further extend Davenport’s careerlong investigation of chance, colour and the innate qualities of paint. For the first time, works on paper are being shown at the gallery, offering a multi-faceted view of Davenport’s working process. The show in London coincides with a major new exhibition of Davenport’s work at Dallas Contemporary, opening in September 2018.

The main gallery space houses Davenport’s large-scale Puddle Paintings, which follow on from his 14-meter-wide installation at the 2017 Venice Biennale and introduce a sculptural element to the pictureplane. Using a schematic colour-palette, Davenport meticulously applies paint from a height, allowing it to ebb and flow in a single linear stroke, a process which is then repeated to form a landscape of colour. These new works, including ‘Mirrored Place’ (2017) and ‘Olympia’ (2018), also incorporate intricate and varying natural patterns as the paint pools at the bottom of the vertical panel in a physical extension of the painting.

Recently, Davenport has been interested in expanding his artistic dialogue by examining the flow of paint in more detail and investigating how to manipulate liquid acrylic to create more compositional variety and complexity. Davenport has found a method to pour a sheet of different colours together in one gesture. As he draws with the paint, often in a diagonal direction, the artist is experimenting with the expansion and contraction of line.

Contrasting with these methodological and rhythmical poured bands, Davenport’s Splat works on paper resemble explosive fireworks. The artist builds paint up in layers, obscuring and erasing each preceding mark to create energy and depth. The mark making is active and aggressive with passages of openness. The fallout from the paint’s impact as it hits the paper leaves residual traces and splinters of colour.

‘We are thrilled to announce this exhibition of new works by Ian Davenport, an artist who the gallery has had the great honour of working closely with for thirty years. We are still awed by his intuitive, energetic, and ever-evolving approach to colour.’ --Michelle Gower, Sales Director

In 2017, Davenport was invited to produce a pavilion for Swatch for the 57th Venice Biennale. Davenport painted the large-scale installation ‘Giardini Colourfall’ and, to coincide with this, designed the limitededition watch Wide Acres of Time. He has received numerous commissions for public installations, most notably by Southwark Council to produce Poured Lines: Southwark Street, a 48-metre-long painting which was completed in 2006 as part of the regeneration of Bankside. Davenport has explored different mediums through his commissions, such as a hand-painted series of porcelain plates in collaboration with Meissen, commissioned by South London Gallery in 2016. In November of the same year, Davenport designed a special edition bag for Christian Dior.

Ian Davenport received early recognition from his participation in Freeze, a student-curated exhibition in London Docklands in 1988, which exhibited the work of Goldsmiths’ students who would later come to be loosely known as the YBAs (Young British Artists). Only two years after graduation, Davenport had his first solo exhibition at Waddington Galleries in 1990, and in the same year, his work was included in The British Art Show, touring to Leeds City Art Gallery and Hayward Gallery, London. He was nominated for the Turner Prize in 1991, and in 1999, was awarded the John Moores Painting Prize. Davenport has been the subject of numerous exhibitions worldwide, with solo museum shows at Ikon Gallery, Birmingham and Tate Liverpool. He is the subject of a forthcoming major solo exhibition at Dallas Contemporary in September 2018.

His work is held in important museum collections throughout the world, including Tate, London; Centre Pompidou, Paris; National Museum of Wales, Cardiff; Von der Heydt Museum, Wuppertal; and Dallas Museum of Art, Texas.