TONI DAVEY 1969
curated by Rose Davey
Exhibition dates 9th May - 13th June 2026
Since opening Corner7 in 2023, I have always intended to exhibit my mum’s work. Perhaps unfairly, I thought no one had ever quite shown how good she is, and perhaps arrogantly, I thought I could do better. So, TONI DAVEY 1969 is that show - my attempt to communicate the range, wit, commitment, and beauty of my mum’s work.
It was the house I grew up in that first showed me Mum was an artist. Various walls of the house displayed the ordered, clean lines, articulated by her work. I particularly remember a series of red and white paper works, folded in a sequence of nine as the paper turns over from red side to white side. Each transformation recorded in equal measurement. I was mesmerised by the logic of it, the rhythm, the repeated aesthetic. This piece, like many others included in the show, was transported from the walls of my childhood home. I wanted to bring together those works that had endlessly fascinated me as a child, and which had clearly evolved my own aesthetic as an artist.
Together, Mum and I went through six decades of her work stored in the attic. We discovered the portfolio she applied with to Chelsea College of Art, and the notebooks she kept as student at Hornsey College of Art. Extracts from both are included in a book that accompanies the exhibition.
Throughout the shifting circumstances of life, family, and career, Mum’s creation was sometimes intermitent. Artists who also parent often pause their studio practice, and creativity may be expressed through a greater variety of means. But it never goes away. The ideas Mum began to visualise in her early 20’s, repeatedly returned throughout her decades. An artist’s career is rarely a series of stepping stones from one idea to the next. It is a continual circling back to a series of constants that refuse to be resolved.
This exhibition aims to describe the variety of these investigations. It includes ink on graph paper, burnt paper, cut paper, folded paper, gold on paper, sheep on paper, books under glass domes and maquettes of sculpture - designed but never realised. The references include numbers, letters, patterns of nature, technology, politics, architecture, the art of Japan, and the landscape. All serve the pattern of logic born from the grid. With so many more works in existence, this selection is just the tip of the iceberg.
Toni Davey is now 78 and continues to work every day. Her appetite for the structure of the grid is never satisfied. Her visual investigation into its potential, never complete, like the grid - it is infinite.
Rose Davey
May 2026
It was the house I grew up in that first showed me Mum was an artist. Various walls of the house displayed the ordered, clean lines, articulated by her work. I particularly remember a series of red and white paper works, folded in a sequence of nine as the paper turns over from red side to white side. Each transformation recorded in equal measurement. I was mesmerised by the logic of it, the rhythm, the repeated aesthetic. This piece, like many others included in the show, was transported from the walls of my childhood home. I wanted to bring together those works that had endlessly fascinated me as a child, and which had clearly evolved my own aesthetic as an artist.
Together, Mum and I went through six decades of her work stored in the attic. We discovered the portfolio she applied with to Chelsea College of Art, and the notebooks she kept as student at Hornsey College of Art. Extracts from both are included in a book that accompanies the exhibition.
Throughout the shifting circumstances of life, family, and career, Mum’s creation was sometimes intermitent. Artists who also parent often pause their studio practice, and creativity may be expressed through a greater variety of means. But it never goes away. The ideas Mum began to visualise in her early 20’s, repeatedly returned throughout her decades. An artist’s career is rarely a series of stepping stones from one idea to the next. It is a continual circling back to a series of constants that refuse to be resolved.
This exhibition aims to describe the variety of these investigations. It includes ink on graph paper, burnt paper, cut paper, folded paper, gold on paper, sheep on paper, books under glass domes and maquettes of sculpture - designed but never realised. The references include numbers, letters, patterns of nature, technology, politics, architecture, the art of Japan, and the landscape. All serve the pattern of logic born from the grid. With so many more works in existence, this selection is just the tip of the iceberg.
Toni Davey is now 78 and continues to work every day. Her appetite for the structure of the grid is never satisfied. Her visual investigation into its potential, never complete, like the grid - it is infinite.
Rose Davey
May 2026
