LONDON, UK.- The Blue Gallery in cooperation with BAR Honda and futurecity is pleased to announce an exhibition of a body of work by Robert Davies entitled one. Davies was given privileged access during last season by the elite British based Formula 1 team, BAR, who finished second in the 2004 Constructors’ Championship. This involved observing all areas of its activities, including the French Grand Prix at Magny Cours, testing at Jerez in Spain and Elvington in Yorkshire as well as several days at the team’s Brackley headquarters. Formula 1 has always sustained an apparently inexhaustible photographic iconography that is largely one-dimensional and invariably predictable. Davies’ remit was to reinterpret the genre by imposing the more rigorous and formal approach of the contemporary artist. The resultant exhibition will offer the viewer a significantly unconventional perception of the sport compared with that to be found on the back pages of newspapers or in motor sport magazines.

In spending time with the team, it soon became clear to me that Formula 1 was in essence about the detail. Every employee, whether designer, driver or mechanic, was working to make miniscule improvements to the car to maximise its speed. Their unwavering attention to the minutiae was astonishing and for this reason I made the decision to concentrate only on the details.

The BAR Formula 1 car is a hugely sophisticated fusion of high-tech engineering in which every component and all the materials used are purely and completely functional - maximum strength, flexibility, power and grip set against minimum weight and drag. However, every element has a potential inherent aesthetic that is, or may be, unconnected with its intended purpose. Davies has transformed the intrinsically mundane visual language of engineering to elicit forms and images of striking beauty.

The exhibition will run for the 5 weeks prior to the start of the 2005 season closing the day before the Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne on March 6th.