Julyan Davis: Triptych
Mountain Bitters
Sunday July 9th at 7:30pm
Exhibition + Talk + Musical Performance
REVOLVE is pleased to host a selection of large scale narrative paintings from the touring museum show Dark Corners: The Appalachian Murder Ballads with accompanying talks by the artist Julyan Davis and musical performance by Mountain Bitters.
Julyan will give a short introduction entitled: A History of Violence; the South’s culture of honor and then Mountain Bitters will perform a set of haunting songs drawing from Appalachian Folk, Cajun and Celtic styles.
Exhibition will run from Friday July 7th - Sunday July 22
“JULYAN DAVIS is an English-born artist who has painted the American South for nearly thirty years. He received his art training at the Byam Shaw School of Art in London. In 1988, having completed his B.A. in painting and printmaking, he traveled to the South on a painting trip that was also fueled by an interest in the history of Demopolis, Alabama and its settling by Bonapartist exiles.
Davis now lives in Asheville, North Carolina. His work is exhibited internationally, and is in many public and private collections. Recent acquisitions include the Gibbes Museum in Charleston, the Greenville County Museum of Art (South Carolina), the Morris Museum (Augusta, GA) and the North Carolina Governor’s Mansion and Western Residence. His newest work, interpreting traditional American ballads through the contemporary South, has been touring museums with accompanying lectures and musical performances.
’The traditional folksong of the Appalachians is close to my heart. I inherited an enthusiasm for such music from my father. With its Celtic origins, it has provided my connection to the Southern landscape since my arrival here twenty three years ago. The songs of this region have given me an old, familiar narrative and a human history that connects to my own background. Some artists are happy to record every alien vista and strange culture travel can provide, but I have found this old tie important in placing me in this new land. For many years I painted scenes; landscapes and urban views, old buildings and interiors, with not a figure in sight. Despite this, they were often described as being haunted by a human presence, and as places that somehow told a story. In these new works the figure has entered the scene.The stories in these ballads are old, but one only has to pick up a newspaper to see they remain fully contemporary. Lovers still fall prey to despair and suicide, or end up in the crime report. These are paintings are set very much in the present, but nothing taking place in them is new’.
MOUNTAIN BITTERS is an acoustic folk trio based out of Asheville, NC. The band consists of Emmalee Hunnicutt on Cello, guitar & vocals, Gretchen Caverly on 5-string viola, fiddle & vocals, and Megan Drollinger on fiddle, mandolin & vocals. Performing an assortment of styles including Appalachian Folk, Cajun and Celtic, their instrumental arrangements, informed by their early Classical training, are original and compelling. Often setting down their instruments to sing a capella, their intuitive harmonies could be described as intoxicating and more than a little haunting. But, as soon as you’ve wiped your tear-dimmed eye, they’ll have you up and dancing again!”
REVOLVE HOURS:
Wednesday: 12p - 8p
Thursday - Saturday: 12p -5p
By appointment other times.