COUNTER CULTURE
Paul Davis Jealous Gallery
Counters, booths, kiosks and desks inspired this work.
Booths of behaviour, desks of possibility, altars of human intercourse, simple structures that can elicit mental discomfort or joy; an uneasy stasis where the outcome is unknown. It could go either way. Cashier number three please.
These structures are silent helpers, functioning well, doing a good job. A piece of architecture within architecture: analogue, stoic and un-AI.
They should be celebrated. They bring people—usually strangers—together. One side demanding something, the other side dealing with those demands.
Security, reception; post office counters, check-ins, off licences, bars, pharmacies, government departments, gallery desks, confessionals, visitor centres, food counters, a simple hole-in-the-wall.
One day, when the internet finally runs everything, I hope they’ll be remembered with some fondness. I think of this as I’m kept on hold listening to grim looped music, tedious special offers and breathless reminders of where I am in the call gridlock.
POSTSCRIPT
This show was due to open on March 23rd 2020, the time the first worrying rumours emerged that the COVID-19 virus was deadly.
Like many others in a similar situation, we postponed the show for an unknowable period.
During—and despite—the ensuing periods of responsible breathing, panic-buying toiletries, confusion, ignoble governmental behaviour, despair of not being able to embrace fragile family members, illness, death by FaceTime and lockdowns 2 and 3, my fondness for humans grew enormously.
I missed things about ourselves I’d not really missed before. One-to-one, in-the-flesh conversations, groups acting and reacting, laughter, banter and joy. And, please, no more of it on Zoom.
We built new counters and screens to help prevent the infection of each other because we needed one another, whether it was for commerce or for love, or for information or play.
These new counters allowed us, whether we liked it not, to be back together again.
Between them is a glass screen of mirrored strips. Paul’s ear is Gavin’s ear and their eyes are half the other’s.
Paul Davis: [looking around] Is that an egg?
Gavin Turk: It started with an egg.
GT: Right - how are we doing? Setting the settings?
[They sit down, one on each side of the mirrored counter]
GT: This is really reminding me of something.
PD: This booth?
GT: Yes. But I don’t know what it is…
PD: I’ve got your left eye right in my eye.
GT: It’s much easier to do when you close one eye…
PD: It’s true.
GT: …much easier to deal with. It’s making feel a bit sick.
PD: What do you think of it?
GT: It’s kind of an open booth. It’s reminding me of an open door in a doorway. Something protecting something from something else. Me being protected from you or you being protected from me. It’s half see-through and half mirror so when I see me I see me and you although when I first looked at this I looked right through it and only saw you but didn’t see me.
PD: Yes. The idea for this piece and the show in general is what we ourselves bring to a human intercourse situation and where these things happen: in a Post Office, a bar, a flight desk, those kinds of things, and whatever we bring effects that situation. Seeing ourselves doing it is odd.
GT: That’s almost like the kiosk becomes a metaphor for the institution but then there’s the person. You could be looking at me as an ‘institution version’ of me.
PD: It’s the human; what that person brings. Could’ve had a terrible night’s sleep or, better, be full of the joys of Spring and bring that to the situation. That joyful and unexpected experience makes my day.
GT: I think that’s the private/personal human spirit bursting through any institutionalised scenario…so what you’re trying to do with this booth is to talk about the way that having this frame and this restriction may help to bring about the things that don’t fit into this or are avoided but are bought to life by this …restriction.
PD: Are you finding it difficult to keep looking into it?
GT: I can’t look into it.
PD: Half of what I’m looking at is looking down - you - but our heads fit perfectly together. The mouth alignment thing is particularly unsettling. Very unnerving.
GT: We have these salt and pepper beards and that’s making them join up quite well. I think this idea of looking at yourself having a conversation is definitely unnerving. If I use internet communication and I’m that little inset picture on the screen of me talking I don’t like to think of what I might look like on the other side of the world or, you know, anywhere on that call - I have to turn the picture of me off. I find it disconcerting. It’s like the voices in your head. If I’m trying to say something and I’m thinking something different at the same time it can kind of cancel out any good things I’m trying to say.
PD: I know what you mean.
GT: I just did it then. [laughter]
Paul Davis and Gavin Turk in conversation at Gavin Turk’s studio, East London.
THE WORK
Booth/kiosk/counter drawings are various sizes mixed media on assorted paper mounted on 210 x 300mm archival 300gsm paper.
Post-it Note© drawings are mixed media mounted on 210 x 300mm archival 300gsm paper.
Sculptures are wood, card, paper, paint, ceramic, foam-board, acrylic (dimensions vary).
THE EXHIBITION
28th April–15th May 2022
Jealous Gallery
53 Curtain Road London EC2A 3PT
Published in 2022 by Paul Davis
69A Southgate Road London N1 3JS UK
Copyright © Paul Davis 2022
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.
ISBN 978-1-5272-5904-1 www.copyrightdavis.com davis@copyrightdavis.com @paulcopyrightdavis
Catalogue designed by Jason Godfrey.
Thanks go to Sophie Smith, Jason Godfrey. Dario Illari and the team at Jealous. John Ross. Heart and the studio at Unit 1. Gavin Turk, Jim Hollingworth at Gavin Turk Studio.
In memory of my mother Evelyn Joan Davis 1933-2016.
ISBN 978-1-5272-5904-1
781527 9 259041