Animated with energy, Emily Davey’s paintings portray a peculiar subject matter. The hybrid figures suggest a reciprocity between human and animal nature. Rather than depicting a real space in order to build a narrative, the artist creates imagined, surreal space for her figures to occupy, camouflage and assimilate into, illustrating our behavioural parallelism with animals. Erotic poses and vivacious colours bring to mind the narcotic, the infantile, the erratic - things we associate with the ‘otherside’ of societal idealism. And these freaks certainly seem like cultural mutants. Faceless, yet with bodies full of expression, the creatures seem to be an analysis of the dehumanising effect of, or anonymity in, the modern world. Or perhaps the work simply suggests possibilities about humankind’s union with nature. The ambiguity of the work dissolves meaning into suggestion and reveals that the world behind cultural-constructed interpretation is profoundly meaningless.

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