Davina de Beer, Relic, 2024
Meeting Point
By Davina de Beer
Front Gallery: 02.10.25 - 13.11.25
In the exhibition titled Meeting Point, Davina de Beer explores the convergence of thread and paint as ways through which unexpected connections emerge. These connections are investigated through cutting, fragmenting, reassembling, and stitching, treating the canvas surface as layered with hidden traces. Her work draws parallels between the body and architectural structures, using this interplay to reflect on themes of loss. The connections that arise — sometimes intentional, sometimes coincidental — emerge through the process of making and become central to her creative inquiry.
The exhibition brings together mixed-media paintings on canvas and linen that vary greatly in scale, from hand-sized reflections on loss and belonging to large linen works that explore the relationship between body, painting, architecture, and memory. De Beer draws inspiration from historical ceramic tile designs found throughout Seville, where she currently lives, using them as starting point for her visual investigations. She disrupts and reconstructs these patterns through her painting and stitching to evoke themes of loss, memory, repair, and belonging. Solid thread and stitching contrast with thin, transparent glazes, activating the surfaces with differing textures and densities — a search for structure, substance, and a sense of stability or grounding. Through the dialogue between paint and thread a subtle negotiation unfolds: one element may be obscured while the other comes to the fore, reflecting the idea that loss is both present and partially healed. The thread, in particular, highlights visible sutures of repair, while loose hanging strands acknowledge that what has been lost can never be fully restored.
The exhibition reflects on the quiet beauty found in an incomplete experience; the use of raw canvas, unfinished painted and stitched forms speak to imperfection, remnants of memories, present insecurity, and the visible marks of a lived experience. The paintings remain deliberately unsettled: contrasting in scale, with interrupted rhythms, surfaces in a state of repair, and unfinished forms that seem to wait. This tension between completion and incompletion invites viewers into an ongoing inquiry, where the process of making and mending becomes as meaningful as the final form itself.