Curtain I–VII

Curtain I – VII [2011] is a series of seven prints referencing the militant suffragette Mary Raleigh Richardson’s attack on Velasquez’s painting, ‘The Toilet of Venus’ at the National Gallery, London in 1914, and the subsequent concealment of that act. Richardson’s incisions have been historicised as her protest against the re-arrest of suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst, yet the details and emphasis of each account vary greatly and her marks have been carefully repaired by conservators.

Repeatedly photocopying documentation of the effect Richardson wrought on the painting, Davis re-inscribed the reproduction of Richardson’s cuts in pencil, leaving Velasquez’s painted outline of Venus to deteriorate as it is repeatedly and mechanically copied. Curtain I – VII questions whether Richardson’s lacerations could be re-imagined as inscriptions or reparations, as additions rather than removals – or both.

Link to accompanying artists multiple here.

Curtain I–VII, 2011
7 digital pigment fine art prints
7 x 64 x 84cm
Curtain I-VII, installation view 10 Jahre Sammlung Rheingold, Schloss Dyck, Germany 2012
Installation view 10 Jahre Sammlung Rheingold Exhibition
Schloss Dyck, Germany, 2012
Curtain I-VII, installation view 2 eva International Limerick, 2012
Installation view eva International
Limerick, 2012
Curtain I-VII, installation view 2 Drawing Room London, 2012
Installation view Not Just the Perfect Moments
Drawing Room, London, 2012.
Photo: Dave Morgan
kate-davis-curtain-i-vii-2011-low-res-photograph-keith-hunter-3
‘Curtain I-VII’, installation view – That Which Remains, 2016, Mount Stuart.
Photo: Keith Hunter