by Meriel Goss

Sarah Davies’s latest bronze collection are as captivating as they are entertaining. The characters are shamanic and metamorphising, drawns from somewhere between Kafka and Krishna, Minotaur and Tinkerbell. By passing over into part lion, bird, horse, otter and demon these bi-species ironically work to dramatise humanity. Inspired by the mythological fusion of human forms with those from nature Davies’ sculptures are solitary personifications of distilled sentiments. Although this collection touches on elfin universes, summons up the fairy spirits of legend and poetry, when Davies cut-and-pastes her imaginary beings they express raw, earthbound emotional extremities.

A heavily pregnant mother sits meditating on a cushion, her feline head (lion, leopard, panther) chanting. In this case the hybridity of human/animal universalises her mammal-hood, adds reverence to her as mother and perhaps justifies her instincts.

A man wanders web-footed (or is it paw-padded?) with his tail slightly dragging. He looks thoughtful, resigned, but not without a quiet grace emanating from his ottery-catlike limbs. Maybe his semi-abilities to dive, chase and be ruthlessly chased with great speed reminds us of something both sad and exciting in survival. Somehow his animal edge discloses a merciless necessity ­to be able to run and hide.

A woman proffers her hand towards you, questioning her audience, confronting us. They are gentle, even helpless gestures overpowered by the force of her frank horse-glare. The penetration of equestrian eyes and strong mane are intolerant, resolute and totally at odds with the passivity of her other forsaking posture.

Another stretches out its arms, opening into a sacrificial pose, looking upwards in celebration, its feathered arms rejoicing at open-winged freedoms.

These are single figures without a fixed context and conspicuously alone. Although inspired by fantastical creatures and beasts, these bodies prescribed with animistic ideas, reveal existential states. They are people with arms elongated like Giacometti’s loners, stretched from carrying excessive weight, overly large palms too big from holding too much. A mother stands arms flung to the side remonstrating the heavens, unable to bear the baby that clings magically to her breast. When Davies plays between myth and metaphor she makes sense of fierce heartaches.

Neither particularly naked nor clothed, feminine but not exclusively so, this cast of characters are human moments both surreal and expressionist. These are our creatures of fear, reflection, pride, loss and excitement.

Cast in bronze from wax carvings they are heavy and static. The stillness in which they perform has Kabuki power declaring histories in single gestures. The theatricality of physical representation of psychological and spiritual life makes this collection an emotional menagerie. This a sculptural Midsummer’s Night Dream exploring the heady confusion of identities uniting in a reverie of life’s mysteries.

When Davies cast her figures from wax into bronze there was concern that the figures would not survive the process that they would melt completely or at least distort. They didn’t, but nothing would have been more appropriate. Even the rough surface left by the artist’s moulding gives the figures a morphic quality, the casting not inhibiting the feeling that the figurines are in movement. In this Davies remains an organic sculptor.

This shifting about between natures says something about woman too. The mythical transgression of forms, the sexless shaven heads and pixie skulls, Davies’s uneven patinas and unfinished skins, make the pieces not quite androgynous but mixed up. This is a pick and mix femininity and proud of it. It’s a type of variable gender; the voluptuousness of a fertile woman could in fact be a man’s fleshy middle-aged spread. In many ways she universalises the feminine outwards. Her devil women, strong in her high heels complete with fanged snake tail, mighty erection, lusty tongue and bullet nipples, is her own goddess, arms aloft saluting the sky. What is enjoyable is there is nothing torn in the unpredictable body-animal-mesh, they reveal themselves proudly assorted.

When we anthropomorphize things, give non-human objects human attributes, these days it’s generally to get a grip on ourselves. When a Willow weeps, something between the arch of bent branches and the folded spine of a sad, old man reveals to us what is intangible in solitary pain. The natural world was our first visual metaphor. Animals, environments and plant life, however far away from urban, post-industrial reality still alert us to our frailties, strengths and wonderment. But what happens when human physique, behaviour or characteristics pass over into natural forms? Sarah Davies’ figures drift somewhere between the two.