Davis’ champion for The Wick is artist Angel Otero. He told The Wick: “Rob has been a dear friend of mine for nearly twenty years, and we’ve continuously championed each other and our work. His support meant the world to me very early on in my career, and to this day, he remains a steadfast presence in my life and practice. Thanks to his extensive knowledge of fabrication, he has been a vehicle of support in my development, instilling the confidence I needed to bring my ideas to life. His paintings have always moved me—they’re both a source of inspiration and something I feel deeply connected to.”

The details in Davis’ works reveal a predilection for 1970s and 1980s domestic and everyday objects – the era of the artist’s childhood – a pastel blue telephone, a pair of woven lawn chairs, a picnic table laid with a gingham cloth or a crocheted quilt, crumpled on a bed. Davis is drawn these things, he says, for their spark of “a memory of people and places from my past.” Working from photographs, Davis makes a study in watercolour before beginning to work in oil, suffusing other ambiental references to the lines of Joan Didion, Rick Bragg and S.A. Crosby to name a few. “If you read the essay ” On Keeping A Notebook” in Didion’s ” Slouching Towards Bethlehem” – that essay is essentially my artist statement,” Davis adds.

Stopping short of nostalgia, these eerie, spectral scenes slowly reveal themselves – prompting the viewer to consider the fraught relationship between image, reproduction and memory. We are enthralled.