Archer Davies - Arenas

Jan Murphy Gallery is pleased to present, Arenas, Archer Davies' first solo exhibition with the gallery.

In August last year Jan Murphy Gallery invited Lucy Culliton and I to travel to Brisbane to spend three days at 'The Ekka', Brisbane's famous Royal Show. From morning until sundown they spent each day drawing and painting with occasional breaks for strawberry ice-cream, coffee and doughnuts. They explored the whole fair however it was the animals that captured our attention the most.

Two parallel worlds exist at the Ekka- so intimately and inextricably linked, yet impossibly irreconcilable - the artificial and the natural, the human and the animal. The neon spectacle of carnival attractions and novel thrills noisily jostle for attention while the animals quietly bear witness - tolerant, patient or perhaps inhabiting a consciousness altogether elsewhere." - Archer Davies 2025

Born in Maleny, Archer Davies graduated from Queensland College of Art in 2010 with a Bachelor of Fine Art (Painting) with First Class Honours. Archer has been a finalist in a number of prizes including The Kilgour Prize (2021), The Percival Portrait Prize (2019, 2014), the Rick Amor Self Portrait Prize (2018) and the Churchie Emerging Emerging Art Prize (2014). He is a featured artist in the 2024 Thames and Hudson publication 'About Face' by Amber Creswell Bell.