Flows

Winner of the 2017 Glaister Ennor Award, Jordan Davey-Emms explores concepts of gap and transfer, linkage and porous networks in relation to place-making and materiality. Flows is an exhibition of new work that looks at structuring and movement.

In Flows, eight pavers with altered faces are laid out in a line. The line has gaps. The pavers sit on the surface of a glossed floor, and re-structure the space. (A flow of people; a rush of air or water). Small items - bowls, stones, carpet, a photograph, a lump of clay - mark out an open area near the pavers.

A channel or path (directional). A soak hole or gravel pit. 

We hopped from cushion to cushion, chair to chair.

Tarseal on the road melts in the heat.

Stones track inside.

Settled/unsettlement.

There is water under the soil; every week or so there are new potholes; hard-top crumbles over liquid slushing; mum moves bricks and cobblestones around our house and counter-sinks them into soft surfaces; she rakes the gravel. A liquid centre (repositioning).

Mum sliced up the lawn with a spade. She cut out squares and lifted them. She cut a channel. The grass was easy to put back - it had become many soft-topped brick blocks that could be re-placed. Fitted back in. (Surface becomes thickness, and is then embedded). We walked back and forth and jumped to pack them down. (Melding). Surface builds up.

Here, there are flat heavy weights and particles that move; floats; flexible boundaries. This area spread out like a net. This section raised up like a jetty in pieces.

I walk along our smooth, flat driveway. I pass by a grass verge marked with painted stones. I press matter into matter and heft blocks; I set the table for dinner.

Water pools or runs off and these pieces get warm in the sun like bodies.

Jordan Davey-Emms is from the Eastern Bay of Plenty. She graduated from Elam School of Fine Arts in 2017 with a BFA (Hons). Previous exhibitions include Ground Hum (2017), Elam Grad Show (2016), What do I want, where do I stand? (2016), Arts Revealed (2016), and Molly Morpeth Canaday Art Award (2016, 2015, 2014).