03/06/2026
We live surrounded by images. Thousands passed before our eyes each week – glanced at briefly, absorbed unconsciously, then replaced almost immediately by the next. Our relationship with visual culture has become increasingly fleeting; attention itself feels fragmented.
Yet standing before a painting is a fundamentally different experience.
A painting asks something of us. It asks for time.
Leigh Davis’s exhibition’ Held In Form’ is, in many ways, an invitation to reclaim that time.
At first glance, these works appear abstract. Shapes overlap and dissolve. Lines describe structures that seem familiar and yet remain elusive. Hints of harbour, vessels, horizons and figures emerge from the surface before retreating again into paint and gesture. Nothing is explicitly stated.
Instead, Leigh offers us fragments of memory, observations distilled over decades of looking, walking, drawing and painting. The works occupy a space between recognition and uncertainty, where the viewer is invited to complete the conversation.
The title ‘Held in Form’ feels particularly resonant.
Form is often understood as something fixed – a boundary, container, a defined shape.
Yet in Leigh’s paintings, form remains fluid. It shifts, breathes and evolves. What holds these compositions together is not rigid structure but a delicate equilibrium of line, colour, rhythm and intuition.
There is a deep sense of balance at work. A confidence that comes from years of refinement & understanding that suggestion can be more powerful than description.
Throughout the gallery, these paintings enter into quiet dialogue with ceramic vessels & sculptural objects. Each works seems to hold attention between solidity and movement, between permanence and change.
In a world increasingly experienced through screens, where images arrive already interpreted and instantly consumed, ‘Held in Form’ reminds us of the value of sustained attention. Of standing still. Of allowing meaning to emerge rather than demanding immediate answers.
These are works that reward patience. They reveal not only the landscape, harbour or figure but also reward the act of looking itself.
