Ten Years After
Anthony Davies and Katy Corner conversations 2003-2008, by Katy Corner
Anthony Davies was born in Hampshire, England, in 1947, the eldest of five children. Rationing was still in place. Davies said "We were very aware of having one pair of shoes a year, a new pair of trousers for winter, and shorts in the summer. We had a television, but it was only turned on for a certain time - we had homework to do...we had books around, we played in the garden...I think it all starts with your parents and what they lead you to."
Parents were powerful forces in those days - "there was no discussion." Davies had a rebellious streak, but it went only so far. He said, "My father gave me enough rope to hang myself, but I never quite did."
Davies' father was a civilian in the Royal Air Force and the family spent several years in Singapore. Through this geographical dislocation, Davies' awareness of being an outsider and his observation skills were honed early on. He recalls, "If you went to a fair, then you just stood and looked. And I still do this today..."
Davies' boyhood ended when he was 12, on the family's return to England from Singapore. "The party was over," he said. Europe was still recovering from WWII and Davies was very aware of England as a 'grey country'. The complexities of conforming to a rigorous educational system were at odds with the explosion in music, fashion and art during the 1960s.
"Going to art school was my salvation," Davies said. "I was having a lot of trouble at home and art school was just a revelation." He spent three years at Winchester School of Art, and in 1970 entered the Royal College of Art in London. He said of that time, "You had to see where you fitted in and be quite determined; you had to take responsibility for yourself."
Carnaby St was full of people and fashion, and the imagery of David Hockney, Peter Blake, and Richard Hamilton was pervasive. A youthful generation was in a frenzy of upheaval with the advent of Elvis and rock & roll. On seeing John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, Davies said, "My life started." Music has become a lasting pleasure and influence, and his use of texture and pattern lends his images a rhythmic, lyrical quality which adds to their atmospheric vitality.
His British influences were solitary figures: Edward Burra and Stanley Spencer, and his eyes also turned to America and its practitioners of Expressionism and Pop Art - James Rosenquist, Tom Kesselman, Claes Oldenberg. Davies said, "I sided with 'Pop' as it was of the street."
"I come from that era of painting when people used to paint from a tube. A lot of those people were really staunch. The American expressionist...Jackson Pollock...they didn't care about anything except this type of painting."
Of today's students, Davies said, "At the age of 16 or 17, you really haven't got a clue, and so you throw yourself into it. People - and institutions - talk about 'passion': passion is about love affairs, not what you're going to do for the rest of your life. A passion can actually switch on and off quite quickly."
Davies won the Royal College of Art's prestigious 'Prix de Rome' in 1973 for engraving, and found himself surrounded by scholars. He said, "At the School of Rome there was the crumbling facade of Empire and colonial attitudes, epitomised by Anthony Blunt, keeper of the Queen's pictures and later to be identified as one of the principal Cambridge spies. Artists were lumped together with these people and there was a marked contradiction between seeing freeloaders and being conscious of making one's own living in the contemporary world."
On his return from Italy, Davies found there to be more afoot than conflict between the generations. Britain was changing rapidly as big industry - steel, ship building, mining - was being taken over by foreign competition. The era of the British 'stiff upper lip' was being overtaken and, fuelled by football violence, "the first generation of British yobbos developed," he said.
Davies was influenced by playwright, filmmaker and social rebel John Osborne ('Look Back in Anger') and by such actors as Lawrence Harvey, Tom Courtenay and Albert Finney, who rejected posh accents and celebrated the working class man.
It is here Davies' ongoing concern for societal inequalities surfaced. Ever since, his work has focused on the 'have nots'. His images of jam-packed dole offices where graffiti is rife, Mohawks rule and inertia simmers, are time capsules of a specific period and timeless as studies of human nature.
Davies had his first one-man show in 1975. Over the next decade, he moved between Wales, London and Northern Ireland, teaching part-time and consolidating his own practice. Eventually he set up his own studio in Belfast where he was to be based for eleven "very important years." I will examine this time has it has informed his work ever since.
Davies lived in Belfast during the second phase of the Troubles, from 1983 to 1994. His studio was three storeys up, inside the barricades. He said, "I became used to operating on the smell of an oily rag, as you do in New Zealand. I had commitment."
"The studio was just a big, open space with metal girders and metal stanchions. There was a bloke over the way who owned the building and he was a benefactor for the arts, really. With his son, I built this area along the lines of an American loft. I had a bed, a wardrobe, a drawing table and my library, and then the rest was all studio. I had two or three presses there - all to do with stone lithography and etching, a couple aquatint boxes, a plans chest."
"The whole commercial centre of Belfast was within a ringed fence about five metres high, which was closed every night about half past seven. So if I was out late, I would either have to get over the top of the barricade or underneath it. I was one of the very few people who actually lived in that area. The only reason it was enclosed was because they were blowing up shops. During disturbances, you just didn't go near certain streets."
"A lot of it [Catholic/Protestant antipathy] was rhetoric, though at the same time it was to do with youth - a lot of the crime was committed by these young hotheads, earning their stripes for the local political affiliations."
"At one point, the employment levels were really bad, though I don't think they actually closed the wharves - the huge shipyards where the Titanic was built. What was happening a lot in those days was that all those big industries which employed a lot of men were downscaling - tobacco, linen, automobile, shipbuilding etc. It was a traumatic time."
"On the street it seemed that it was just about Protestants and Catholics, but it was really about intimidation and fear. It was tit-for-tat killings, and it was hard to see it as just a political movement."
"There was the idea that this was an old-fashioned Holy War, but in most cases it was a load of gangsters selling drugs to school children, making money out of protection, intimidation, siphoning money off. It was quite a corrupt place; people were playing an odd sort of game, with drastic results. Obviously things have changed but it's still a paradox."
"Our of adversity comes good things," concluded Davies. In Derry where was Declan MacGonagle, who set up the Orchard Gallery where major international exhibitions were held. Several independent galleries were set up during the time he was there which provided an environment for young artists. Also, the Arts Council of Northern Ireland was quite generous with funds and supported many local projects.
There was a large collective studio in Belfast and an excellent MA course at the University of Ulster where Davies had a full-time job for two years. He then committed himself to staying on, self sufficient in his own studio. Many of his print series in these years between 1982 and 1993 were shown at international print biennials over the next few years. "In terms of my career," Davies said, "this was the time I really felt I was a serious, committed artist. I had my studio set up and earned just enough to continue by tutoring [in the British Isles]."
Davies highlighted such social issues as unemployment and violence, while taking note of the tools people used to survive - music, for example. "I did quite a few series based on what was happening in Northern Ireland, and in many ways it was taking quite a jaundiced look at the Protestant movement." He became accustomed to portraying warring factions, disaffected youth and the results of their actions on the helpless. Years later, gangs in New Zealand stir up the same emotions and wreak their own version of 'Trouble".
"Eventually, it was time to leave," he said. "I couldn't pay the rent. I was engulfed by a deep malaise. Cynicism had taken over. There were all these revenge killings...you really couldn't see anything on the horizon..."
In terms of a career as a print-maker, Davies says, "I don't know if coming to New Zealand would have been my first choice." He might have been better served in America or Australia, where more optimistic attitudes abound, rather than diving into the grim heart of middle New Zealand. His slightly depressive character however, takes comfort in the mottos: 'You are at home wherever you are' and 'You can't yearn for something you can't have'.
Davies put out feelers in the international job market and in 1994, became Artist in Residence at Elam School of Fine Art, Auckland. 1995 was spent as Visiting Professor at Florida State University, and in 1996, he was back in New Zealand to settle.
Lured by the land, Davies began a period of journeying. Because he doesn't drive, Davies travelled the North Island by bus, observing and recording. He said, "I really took to the New Zealand countryside. It was warm...far more rugged. When you're bombing through the countryside it's very freeing...inspirational."
Davies' whole attitude needed to change after Northern Ireland; no one was interested in the previous years of work. He needed to rethink his approach for a New Zealand context and was drawn to the pioneer spirit of starting from scratch. The move from urban to rural was a major change. The resulting groups of prints included Introduction to New Zealand, God's Country, Waihi-In Memory Of, and Journey through the Takapau Plains.
Davies remained an outsider, though he was embedded in the NZ experience by the time the Kaimanawa Horses series of etchings were shown in 2001. These works rose out of the controversy between the Department of Conservation, who were attempting to protect a rare species of tussock grass from wild horses, and animal welfare groups intent on stopping the cull. The prints took no sides, but presented the horses at the centre of the debate in raw, spare-no-feelings fashion.
Davies' pattern of extracting a volatile issue or event from the media is fundamental to his practice. In 2002, Davies could not ignore world events, and in the series of drawings and prints, Blood, Sweat and Oil, he drops us into the Iraq war. Using Xeroxes of newspaper images, he laid down scenes of war in general, and, more specifically, adapted images of Saddam Hussein's battered sons after their killings.
Davies is a master at setting the mood and he attempts to present his take on media photographs in as even a tone as journalists are supposed to. With the addition of layers of contrast and texture, the results are even harder-hitting.
The series Twin Towers, Wanganui (2003/04) was Davies' response to this small city, born out of the real setting of Kowhai Park children's adventure playground. There was an air of unease between the surreal concrete statuses - dinosaurs, Humpty Dumpty, Mt Egmont - and the potential dangers of lurking in the bushes to confront small children. The recent murder of six-year-old Coral Ellen Burrows by her stepfather was coiled at the heart of the deceptively playful lithographs. Davies says, "I think for a country with a small population, there's some really grim happenings. There are recent phenomena, like boy racers, guns, methamphetamine..."
"There is a strong emphasis on family and belonging, but there is a special kind of lawlessness here, especially family violence, a darker side..." He wonders if this is the result of New Zealand being a mainly rural, isolated society. "There's a simplicity of living in New Zealand, which I respond to. By international standards it doesn't earn a great deal of money, but its values are fundamentally sound." Nostalgia comes into it. "I like basic living; the fact that I've got my own garden and grow my own vegetables suits my way of life."
One boon of Davies' forays into academia has been access to libraries and photocopiers. In Camouflage: With Attitude for example, the layers of images have been put in place by copying and sizing drawings, then rearranging the until the elements gel.
Since 2000, home base for Davies has been Wanganui. Imagery of gangs and youth culture have been recurring in his work since that time, and he drew parallels with the tensions he witnessed in Northern Ireland. He equivocated, "Do I support the gangs or don't I? I came from Northern Ireland where there was a history of intimidation and fear." He recalled an incident in mid 2007 after a child was killed in a drive-by shooting in Wanganui. "It was a complete re-enactment of the helicopters and the gangs [in Belfast]. Violence and intimidation in good old New Zealand - it's incredible."
"I was trotting along with two dalmatians - which are hardly pit bulls - and passed a house which I know is a gang house, and there's a guy standing outside, muffled up with a bandanna over his mouth. I said 'Good Evening' and he mumbled something, because he didn't expect anyone to be polite."
"It's dark; what's the guy doing? Is he patrolling? It's all this macho crap. And in the meantime, the police are picking up more and more guys. What's that about? It's all been triggered by one factor that some guy has gone past and shot a child to death. And then there are all these repercussions - ban gangs, ban patches, bang a few more kids up - what's that going to do?"
"In a sense, I think the gangs do have a place. It's a home, somewhere to belong. And I think, 'Where do I belong?' Everybody wants to belong somewhere."
Davies is still searching. He said "I carry all the baggage of being 60 years of age, of having lived in Northern Ireland but of being brought up in a very cozy middle class existence in Hampshire, England." Davies is aware that he is still a newcomer to New Zealand, and said, "I feel here I've become terribly puritan." Though he remains an outsider who may never grasp the full nature of his adopted country, he said, "I'm conscious of the age I'm living in."
"I think I'm basically a person of the 70s, but that the aim of any successful artist should be to transcend any particular era to make work of consequence." This requires reinvention. In his work, Davies is continually exploring techniques to keep up with the flow of ideas.
History has yet to define our age, but it can be seen to be chaotic, overloaded with information, and dangerous in ever more inventive ways. Against this, the processes of print-making have remained unchanged for centuries. It is Davies' mastery of the discrete forms that allows him to experiment, struggle forward and break new ground. "I was brought up to work," he said. "It's that feeling of guilt and...being true to yourself and trying to carry on. But it doesn't make for inner contentment. For a long time you work completely in the fog. Most of my life is spent in the fog. It really is."
Out of Davies' fog comes the dazzle of his perfectionism as a print-maker, together with warning signals for us and his own battle plan for survival.
Parents were powerful forces in those days - "there was no discussion." Davies had a rebellious streak, but it went only so far. He said, "My father gave me enough rope to hang myself, but I never quite did."
Davies' father was a civilian in the Royal Air Force and the family spent several years in Singapore. Through this geographical dislocation, Davies' awareness of being an outsider and his observation skills were honed early on. He recalls, "If you went to a fair, then you just stood and looked. And I still do this today..."
Davies' boyhood ended when he was 12, on the family's return to England from Singapore. "The party was over," he said. Europe was still recovering from WWII and Davies was very aware of England as a 'grey country'. The complexities of conforming to a rigorous educational system were at odds with the explosion in music, fashion and art during the 1960s.
"Going to art school was my salvation," Davies said. "I was having a lot of trouble at home and art school was just a revelation." He spent three years at Winchester School of Art, and in 1970 entered the Royal College of Art in London. He said of that time, "You had to see where you fitted in and be quite determined; you had to take responsibility for yourself."
Carnaby St was full of people and fashion, and the imagery of David Hockney, Peter Blake, and Richard Hamilton was pervasive. A youthful generation was in a frenzy of upheaval with the advent of Elvis and rock & roll. On seeing John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, Davies said, "My life started." Music has become a lasting pleasure and influence, and his use of texture and pattern lends his images a rhythmic, lyrical quality which adds to their atmospheric vitality.
His British influences were solitary figures: Edward Burra and Stanley Spencer, and his eyes also turned to America and its practitioners of Expressionism and Pop Art - James Rosenquist, Tom Kesselman, Claes Oldenberg. Davies said, "I sided with 'Pop' as it was of the street."
"I come from that era of painting when people used to paint from a tube. A lot of those people were really staunch. The American expressionist...Jackson Pollock...they didn't care about anything except this type of painting."
Of today's students, Davies said, "At the age of 16 or 17, you really haven't got a clue, and so you throw yourself into it. People - and institutions - talk about 'passion': passion is about love affairs, not what you're going to do for the rest of your life. A passion can actually switch on and off quite quickly."
Davies won the Royal College of Art's prestigious 'Prix de Rome' in 1973 for engraving, and found himself surrounded by scholars. He said, "At the School of Rome there was the crumbling facade of Empire and colonial attitudes, epitomised by Anthony Blunt, keeper of the Queen's pictures and later to be identified as one of the principal Cambridge spies. Artists were lumped together with these people and there was a marked contradiction between seeing freeloaders and being conscious of making one's own living in the contemporary world."
On his return from Italy, Davies found there to be more afoot than conflict between the generations. Britain was changing rapidly as big industry - steel, ship building, mining - was being taken over by foreign competition. The era of the British 'stiff upper lip' was being overtaken and, fuelled by football violence, "the first generation of British yobbos developed," he said.
Davies was influenced by playwright, filmmaker and social rebel John Osborne ('Look Back in Anger') and by such actors as Lawrence Harvey, Tom Courtenay and Albert Finney, who rejected posh accents and celebrated the working class man.
It is here Davies' ongoing concern for societal inequalities surfaced. Ever since, his work has focused on the 'have nots'. His images of jam-packed dole offices where graffiti is rife, Mohawks rule and inertia simmers, are time capsules of a specific period and timeless as studies of human nature.
Davies had his first one-man show in 1975. Over the next decade, he moved between Wales, London and Northern Ireland, teaching part-time and consolidating his own practice. Eventually he set up his own studio in Belfast where he was to be based for eleven "very important years." I will examine this time has it has informed his work ever since.
Davies lived in Belfast during the second phase of the Troubles, from 1983 to 1994. His studio was three storeys up, inside the barricades. He said, "I became used to operating on the smell of an oily rag, as you do in New Zealand. I had commitment."
"The studio was just a big, open space with metal girders and metal stanchions. There was a bloke over the way who owned the building and he was a benefactor for the arts, really. With his son, I built this area along the lines of an American loft. I had a bed, a wardrobe, a drawing table and my library, and then the rest was all studio. I had two or three presses there - all to do with stone lithography and etching, a couple aquatint boxes, a plans chest."
"The whole commercial centre of Belfast was within a ringed fence about five metres high, which was closed every night about half past seven. So if I was out late, I would either have to get over the top of the barricade or underneath it. I was one of the very few people who actually lived in that area. The only reason it was enclosed was because they were blowing up shops. During disturbances, you just didn't go near certain streets."
"A lot of it [Catholic/Protestant antipathy] was rhetoric, though at the same time it was to do with youth - a lot of the crime was committed by these young hotheads, earning their stripes for the local political affiliations."
"At one point, the employment levels were really bad, though I don't think they actually closed the wharves - the huge shipyards where the Titanic was built. What was happening a lot in those days was that all those big industries which employed a lot of men were downscaling - tobacco, linen, automobile, shipbuilding etc. It was a traumatic time."
"On the street it seemed that it was just about Protestants and Catholics, but it was really about intimidation and fear. It was tit-for-tat killings, and it was hard to see it as just a political movement."
"There was the idea that this was an old-fashioned Holy War, but in most cases it was a load of gangsters selling drugs to school children, making money out of protection, intimidation, siphoning money off. It was quite a corrupt place; people were playing an odd sort of game, with drastic results. Obviously things have changed but it's still a paradox."
"Our of adversity comes good things," concluded Davies. In Derry where was Declan MacGonagle, who set up the Orchard Gallery where major international exhibitions were held. Several independent galleries were set up during the time he was there which provided an environment for young artists. Also, the Arts Council of Northern Ireland was quite generous with funds and supported many local projects.
There was a large collective studio in Belfast and an excellent MA course at the University of Ulster where Davies had a full-time job for two years. He then committed himself to staying on, self sufficient in his own studio. Many of his print series in these years between 1982 and 1993 were shown at international print biennials over the next few years. "In terms of my career," Davies said, "this was the time I really felt I was a serious, committed artist. I had my studio set up and earned just enough to continue by tutoring [in the British Isles]."
Davies highlighted such social issues as unemployment and violence, while taking note of the tools people used to survive - music, for example. "I did quite a few series based on what was happening in Northern Ireland, and in many ways it was taking quite a jaundiced look at the Protestant movement." He became accustomed to portraying warring factions, disaffected youth and the results of their actions on the helpless. Years later, gangs in New Zealand stir up the same emotions and wreak their own version of 'Trouble".
"Eventually, it was time to leave," he said. "I couldn't pay the rent. I was engulfed by a deep malaise. Cynicism had taken over. There were all these revenge killings...you really couldn't see anything on the horizon..."
In terms of a career as a print-maker, Davies says, "I don't know if coming to New Zealand would have been my first choice." He might have been better served in America or Australia, where more optimistic attitudes abound, rather than diving into the grim heart of middle New Zealand. His slightly depressive character however, takes comfort in the mottos: 'You are at home wherever you are' and 'You can't yearn for something you can't have'.
Davies put out feelers in the international job market and in 1994, became Artist in Residence at Elam School of Fine Art, Auckland. 1995 was spent as Visiting Professor at Florida State University, and in 1996, he was back in New Zealand to settle.
Lured by the land, Davies began a period of journeying. Because he doesn't drive, Davies travelled the North Island by bus, observing and recording. He said, "I really took to the New Zealand countryside. It was warm...far more rugged. When you're bombing through the countryside it's very freeing...inspirational."
Davies' whole attitude needed to change after Northern Ireland; no one was interested in the previous years of work. He needed to rethink his approach for a New Zealand context and was drawn to the pioneer spirit of starting from scratch. The move from urban to rural was a major change. The resulting groups of prints included Introduction to New Zealand, God's Country, Waihi-In Memory Of, and Journey through the Takapau Plains.
Davies remained an outsider, though he was embedded in the NZ experience by the time the Kaimanawa Horses series of etchings were shown in 2001. These works rose out of the controversy between the Department of Conservation, who were attempting to protect a rare species of tussock grass from wild horses, and animal welfare groups intent on stopping the cull. The prints took no sides, but presented the horses at the centre of the debate in raw, spare-no-feelings fashion.
Davies' pattern of extracting a volatile issue or event from the media is fundamental to his practice. In 2002, Davies could not ignore world events, and in the series of drawings and prints, Blood, Sweat and Oil, he drops us into the Iraq war. Using Xeroxes of newspaper images, he laid down scenes of war in general, and, more specifically, adapted images of Saddam Hussein's battered sons after their killings.
Davies is a master at setting the mood and he attempts to present his take on media photographs in as even a tone as journalists are supposed to. With the addition of layers of contrast and texture, the results are even harder-hitting.
The series Twin Towers, Wanganui (2003/04) was Davies' response to this small city, born out of the real setting of Kowhai Park children's adventure playground. There was an air of unease between the surreal concrete statuses - dinosaurs, Humpty Dumpty, Mt Egmont - and the potential dangers of lurking in the bushes to confront small children. The recent murder of six-year-old Coral Ellen Burrows by her stepfather was coiled at the heart of the deceptively playful lithographs. Davies says, "I think for a country with a small population, there's some really grim happenings. There are recent phenomena, like boy racers, guns, methamphetamine..."
"There is a strong emphasis on family and belonging, but there is a special kind of lawlessness here, especially family violence, a darker side..." He wonders if this is the result of New Zealand being a mainly rural, isolated society. "There's a simplicity of living in New Zealand, which I respond to. By international standards it doesn't earn a great deal of money, but its values are fundamentally sound." Nostalgia comes into it. "I like basic living; the fact that I've got my own garden and grow my own vegetables suits my way of life."
One boon of Davies' forays into academia has been access to libraries and photocopiers. In Camouflage: With Attitude for example, the layers of images have been put in place by copying and sizing drawings, then rearranging the until the elements gel.
Since 2000, home base for Davies has been Wanganui. Imagery of gangs and youth culture have been recurring in his work since that time, and he drew parallels with the tensions he witnessed in Northern Ireland. He equivocated, "Do I support the gangs or don't I? I came from Northern Ireland where there was a history of intimidation and fear." He recalled an incident in mid 2007 after a child was killed in a drive-by shooting in Wanganui. "It was a complete re-enactment of the helicopters and the gangs [in Belfast]. Violence and intimidation in good old New Zealand - it's incredible."
"I was trotting along with two dalmatians - which are hardly pit bulls - and passed a house which I know is a gang house, and there's a guy standing outside, muffled up with a bandanna over his mouth. I said 'Good Evening' and he mumbled something, because he didn't expect anyone to be polite."
"It's dark; what's the guy doing? Is he patrolling? It's all this macho crap. And in the meantime, the police are picking up more and more guys. What's that about? It's all been triggered by one factor that some guy has gone past and shot a child to death. And then there are all these repercussions - ban gangs, ban patches, bang a few more kids up - what's that going to do?"
"In a sense, I think the gangs do have a place. It's a home, somewhere to belong. And I think, 'Where do I belong?' Everybody wants to belong somewhere."
Davies is still searching. He said "I carry all the baggage of being 60 years of age, of having lived in Northern Ireland but of being brought up in a very cozy middle class existence in Hampshire, England." Davies is aware that he is still a newcomer to New Zealand, and said, "I feel here I've become terribly puritan." Though he remains an outsider who may never grasp the full nature of his adopted country, he said, "I'm conscious of the age I'm living in."
"I think I'm basically a person of the 70s, but that the aim of any successful artist should be to transcend any particular era to make work of consequence." This requires reinvention. In his work, Davies is continually exploring techniques to keep up with the flow of ideas.
History has yet to define our age, but it can be seen to be chaotic, overloaded with information, and dangerous in ever more inventive ways. Against this, the processes of print-making have remained unchanged for centuries. It is Davies' mastery of the discrete forms that allows him to experiment, struggle forward and break new ground. "I was brought up to work," he said. "It's that feeling of guilt and...being true to yourself and trying to carry on. But it doesn't make for inner contentment. For a long time you work completely in the fog. Most of my life is spent in the fog. It really is."
Out of Davies' fog comes the dazzle of his perfectionism as a print-maker, together with warning signals for us and his own battle plan for survival.
