John Davis: Place

About the exhibition
This 1975 solo exhibition by John Davis presented a refined version of works shown in the Sixth Mildura Sculpture Triennial earlier that year. Davis had been pivotal to the early years of this recurring and influential exhibition for large-scale sculpture, installation and performance art. John Davis—Place included installation, photography and video works that reflected Davis’s burgeoning interests in land art, process-based and conceptual practices, often using organic or recycled materials. The exhibition catalogue included a manifesto-like essay by Noel Hutchison, which foregrounded the environmental and anti-commercial concerns of the artist and described Place as ‘a direct work, provocative in its austerity’. Following this exhibition, Davis was also the artist-in-residence at Monash University for six months in 1976, on the invitation of Patrick McCaughey.

Reference: Anne E. Sanders, ‘The Mildura Sculpture Triennials 1961–1978: an interpretative history’, PhD dissertation, Australian National University, 2009.

Acknowledgement
This exhibition and its catalogue were made possible by a grant from the Visual Arts Board of the Australia Council. With support from the Audio-Visual Aids Department, Monash University.

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^{Image: John Davis: Place, signboard, site-specific installation, Monash University, Clayton Campus, 1975.
Photo: Sue Vaughan}