Barbados-based artist Annalee Davis launches first solo exhibition in the UK

The National Cultural Foundation, in its continued effort to support the creative industries, offered support to Barbadian-based artist Annalee Davis to build a new website platforming her hybrid art practice ahead of her first solo exhibition in the UK entitled re: wilding at Haarlem Artspace in Derbyshire. The exhibition opened September 12, 2020 and presents a new installation commission piece by Haarlem alongside recent drawings and a large scale photograph. the works reflect on the rural, reconstructing meaning and connections. The exhibition is also part of re: rural – four contemporary artists un-learn and re-imagine the rural, which also presents the work of women artists Feral Practice, Deirdre O’Mahony and Pauline Woolley on the gallery’s new online platform Haarlem Periodical. Haarlem Artspace is in Wirksworth, a town with a radical political and industrial history in Derbyshire.

Curator of the exhibition, Liv Penrose Punnett said “It’s been fantastic working with Annalee and her drawings and new sculpture. It feels like it has really highlighted the cross Atlantic historical connections and shown audiences here the importance of the plantation in terms of our collective rural economy, the history of this and our relationship to it now.”

The ideas in Davis’ works are further explored at Haarlem Online as part of re:rural- four contemporary artists un-learn and re-imagine the rural. The Haarlem Periodical includes: Annalee Davis Wild Plant Series, Sweeping the Fields, (Bush) Tea Plot – A Decolonial Patch for Mill Workers: Feral Practice Mycorrhizal Meditation & Homo Mycelium: Deirdre O’Mahony, SPUD, A Village Plot: Pauline Woolley, The Sky Calls to Me & Beyond the Celestial Sphere.

Annalee Davis is a visual artist, cultural instigator, educator and writer, with a hybrid practice. She works at the intersection of biography and history, focusing on post-plantation economies by engaging with a particular landscape on Barbados. Her studio, located on a working dairy farm, operated historically as a 17thC sugarcane plantation, offering a critical context for her practice by engaging with the residue of the plantation.

Click here to view the exhibition

Re:wilding by Annalee Davis, 11 September – 11 October 2020. Haarlem Artspace, Derby Rd, Wirksworth, Matlock DE4 4BG