Marked by an evolution and aesthetic shift from Donovan’s signature wall paintings, GENESIS builds on what came before. Now, lurking in the very fabric of her constructed walls are surrealist figures: mechanical characters who seem to emerge from her subconscious to call on the constructions we create in ourselves. Although they belong very much to her world, they equally represent archetypal roles we may all relate to: the rebel, the dancer, the judge, the fawn. Seeing these works in the flesh, it’s hard not to ask why we haven’t always associated beauty with decay, or the urban with the rural, and why indeed we relate to one particular piece over another. Through Donovan, we get a glimpse of the genesis of contrasts in which we live both as people, with multiple internal lives, and as a wider, increasingly globalized population living in an ever-growing patchwork of new and neglected builds.
