Art Plural Gallery is pleased to announce the inaugural solo exhibition of British artist Ian Davenport in South-East Asia. The exhibition titled Ian Davenport: Between the Lines runs from 11th May through 7th July, 2012 and features new paintings which the artist has specifically created for this exhibition.

In conjunction with the exhibition will be the publication of Ian Davenport: Between the Lines, a fully illustrated, comprehensive and definitive catalogue of the artist’s poured paintings.

"I control liquid, I use colour, and I try to choreograph these different elements together. There’s a lot of internal rigour to the process, but at the same time it is about chance" - Ian Davenport

Former Turner Prize nominee, Ian Davenport’s aim is to create a purely visual experience through colours. The artist is recognised for his intense and unconventional painting practice, working with a crescendo of colours orchestrated in rows of lines. His distinctive creative process involves the pouring of paint with an industrial syringe over the body of a working surface, allowing the line of colour to ebb and flow into saturated puddles.

Within the stripes and sections, Davenport would literally count the seconds involved in each pour of the paint – deeming it similar to a musical beat. Sometimes this entire process takes place in happenstance and other times, under the pressure of a calculated tilt of the surface. Creating diptychs, triptychs, singular works and at the same time enjoying the culmination of a large-scale monumental piece, the artist’s visual language is deeply rooted in colour, rhythm, timing, control and chance.

"I am thrilled to be working on my first solo exhibition in Singapore – Art Plural has the potential to become one of the most important galleries in the region and it’s an honour to be one of the first solo shows in this unique space. This exhibition is a great opportunity for me to showcase some new paintings and reach a completely new audience at the same time" - Ian Davenport 

"Ian Davenport belongs in the realm of great colourist painters. We are very pleased to be the first to present his works in South-East Asia" - Frédéric de Senarclens, CEO of Art Plural Gallery.

About Ian Davenport
As one of the most prominent contemporary artists of post-painterly abstraction, Ian Davenport has injected new life to the practice of painting. The artist consistently creates complex colour arrangements in vertical lines of varying widths. Starting out to only have had experimented with monochromatic or subtle hues, he expanded his repertoire and proceeded to work with bright, vibrant tones from animated sitcoms in popular culture – such as The Simpsons. His works are formal and calculated, but also vulnerable to unassailable forces of gravity and chance. Seeking inspiration from Italian frescoes, cars, street signs, and Flamenco, Davenport works by pouring gloss paint from heavy-duty syringes spaced along the top of the working surface, and then tilting it, or simply allowing the paint to overflow and ooze into concentric puddles. Borne out of rigorous experimentation, the artist creates works that explore physical and psychological relationships between the viewer and his visual culture with sensory immediacy.  

Ian Davenport was born in Sidcup in London in 1966. He studied art at the Northwich College of Art and Design in Cheshire before going to Goldsmiths College from where he graduated in 1988. The artist was commissioned to create a site-specific installation for Bank BNP Paribas in London in 1997; a 13-metre mural for the Tate Triennial in 2003; a wall painting for the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Warwick University; and most notably, a 48-metre long painting for Southwark Council and Land Securities in 2006. His works can be found in many important collections worldwide, including the Arts Council Collection in London; The British Council in London; Daimler Chrysler Collection in Stuttgart; Dallas Museum of Art in Texas; the Tate in London and the Weltkunst Collection in Zurich, among others. The artist lives and works in London.