Zoo is a solo exhibition with the young British photographer Dominic Davies, one of the most consistently innovative and significant photographers in UK today. The show features works from the Zoo series, an ongoing project with interiors and exteriors from zoos in Europe.
This exhibition, produced by Bildmuseet, is the first museum show with Davies, who recently has been featured in the prestigious art magazine Camera Austria as well as in 'Visceral Pleasures' the newly launched comprehensive biography on UK's top graphic designer Vaughan Oliver. Kruse Verlag in Hamburg released the monograph To Cage in August, 2001, featuring the Zoo series with a text by Michael Mack.
Dominic Davies' photographic series Zoo takes on the subject of European Zoo gardens. While the subject matter is consistent and recognizable: caged animals, human domination, aesthetics of captivity, looking and being looked at; the photographs are disorienting, askew, warped. Colour is bleak yet saturated, a peculiar blur, with regions of the images strangely out of focus, disturbs and challenges our gaze. These photographs speak of territories and supervision, about discrimination and freedom. He makes visible renderings of nature, turns the landscape into a trophe, and examines the contradiction between the call for authenticity and the drive towards control.
Dominic Davies, born 1966, lives and works in Brixton, England.
