“I’ll Leave a Secret in the Window for You: Painting Grotto”
Matilda Davis
8 May → 27 June 2021
Matilda Davis transforms the West Space Window into a Wunderkammer in a Grotto. Behind the glass of West Space Window, Davis’s work I’ll Leave a Secret in the Window for You: Painting Grotto consider the contradictory forces within the sacred. The Grotto is a sacred place, where one displays artefacts, religious icons, objects excavated from the earth.
“The Grotto is sacred, the museum is sacred, the gallery is sacred.
The buffer of glass reinforces sacredness, the paintings are perhaps too fragile, or cursed, to share oxygen with us. You can look, but through this thick mineral lens.
Natural Grottos occur in caves, carved out by the wind and water, a spot made for something blessed. Then carved by hand into marble walls of the Church, a spot for Mary and a candle. And now the Painting Grotto for objects made sacred by being there”
– Matilda Davis
This project is supported by the City of Yarra.
Matilda Davis’s works are personal constructions imbued with peculiar characters, lush darkness and latent narrative. Extending from the magical realism genre, complex psychological landscapes composed of particular lexicons come together with forms of molten fluidity. She has become increasingly interested in unpacking symbols, religion and spirituality and using imagery as a way of mapping out and understanding how they have shaped her world.