J Davies: Revolving

J Davies: Revolving

Presented as a stream of consciousness, *Revolving* unfolds like a living archive in perpetual motion. Drawing from years of recorded moments, conversations and encounters, the work revisits familiar scenes that return altered by time, emotion and experience.

Moving between fleeting fragments and extended pauses, the video creates a nonlinear rhythm that mirrors the way memory operates. Images, sounds and gestures reappear throughout the work, building meaning through repetition and unexpected connections. Writing on walls reflects back on itself, conversations echo across years and recurring patterns emerge like glitches in reality.

At the heart of *Revolving* are queer bodies existing without performance or apology. Nakedness becomes casual, intimacy feels natural and moments of friendship, desire, humour and tenderness coexist within the same emotional landscape. Faces return, phrases repeat and accidental synchronisations invite viewers to consider the possibility that life itself moves in cycles.

Rather than presenting a fixed narrative, *Revolving* welcomes audiences into a world shaped by connection, return and transformation. The work examines the hidden threads that run through our lives and the repetitions that gradually reveal who we are becoming. Through this continual process of return, queer existence emerges not as a linear journey, but as an ongoing rhythm of bodies, memories and desires revolving towards one another.

J Davies (Ng?ti Te Awhitu, Ng?ti Hau?) is an Australian-born takat?pui artist living and creating on the lands of the Kulin Nation in Naarm/Melbourne. Their practice is grounded in an ever-expanding archive of contemporary queer existence, exploring themes of identity, intimacy, community, culture and neurodiversity.

Working with a deliberately personal and tender approach, Davies turns the camera inward to document the private geographies of their own life, inviting audiences to reconsider how intimacy is formed, communicated and valued. Their work also reflects an evolving relationship with time and memory, informed in part by a processing disorder that blurred the boundaries between dreaming and waking.

Davies' work has been exhibited internationally and nationally, including at Les Rencontres d'Arles in France, the Hong Kong International Photography Festival, Melbourne Now at the National Gallery of Victoria, the Centre for Contemporary Photography and Hillvale Gallery. They have undertaken an artist residency at Collingwood Yards, been a finalist in both the Bowness Photography Prize and National Photographic Portrait Prize, and were awarded the Midsumma Art Prize in 2026.

5 August - 5 September 2026
Opening event: 6th August, 6-8pm