Dreamstate Huw Davies Gallery (2013)

The Dreamstate series of photographs come out of my ramblings across a man-made mountain of mattresses dumped in the southern highlands of NSW. To my eye, the mass of disintegrating floral and padded stitching is strangely beautiful in its ugliness. Each mattress bears the scars of its individual history, the bodies it has cushioned and a vast night of dreams once enjoyed, but now unmade. The surfaces are cotton and polyester landscapes, revealing ripples, meanders and cavities and an intimate geology of stains and tears. To return the focus of these objects to the poignancy of the sleeping body, I have chosen a close view of the subject. Hence, each and every imperfection in the mattress is a reminder of human frailties and our shortsightedness.