Ian Davenport

A 1991 Turner Prize Nominee, born and raised in Sidcup for over 20 years, Ian Davenport has made paintings by pouring paint onto a tilted surface. Driven by an enduring fascination with the materiality of paint, he goes to work using his signature technique, which delivers elegant vertical lines cascading down the panels into rich puddles of colour. Davenport’s control is evident in the carefully composed series of colours that populate his paintings, which are experiments in colour relationships guided by his intuition and mastery of the subject. Davenport often uses the colours in the historical work as a reference point to initiate his own colour sequences and explorations of movement, surface and light. In so doing he questions how colour gives shape to a picture, helping to structure the background and foreground in representational pictures, and produce rhythm and dynamism in abstract art. Davenport studied at Goldsmiths College alongside notable peers such as Damien Hirst, Michael Landy, Gary Hume, and Sarah Lucas. He graduated in 1988 and that same year was included in Hirst’s seminal Freeze exhibition. On the secondary market Ian’s works have been sold for six figures.