Born in Cheshire in 1946, John Davies initially studied painting at Hull and Manchester Colleges of Art (1963-67), before moving on to the sculpture department at the Slade School of Fine Art, London (1967-1969), where he was taught by, amongst others, Reg Butler. He then won a sculpture fellowship at Gloucester College of Art in 1969. In the late 1960s, Davies began making plaster casts of heads, body parts and whole figures, incorporating elements such as glass eyes and dressing the figures in real clothes, sourced from thrift stores or his own wardrobe. He became particularly well-known for his somewhat unsettling life-size figures with deathly-grey faces, which were exhibited both individually and in groups, positioned to transform the exhibition space into a theatre, with different combinations of figures suggesting different relationships. Davies has received numerous awards during his career, such as the Sainsbury Award and the Royal Academy of Arts’ Jack Goldhill Award for Sculpture. He is represented in major collections around the world, including the Tate Gallery, the British Museum and the National Portrait Gallery in London; the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Deutsche Gewerkschaftsbund, Berlin, the Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, the Institut Valencià d’Art Modern, and the Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth. Davies lives and works in Kent and London.
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