Image: Waddington Custot, London
Waddington Custot will present 'Reflections', a survey exhibition of Ian Davenport’s career from the late 1980s to the present, at its London gallery from 21 September to 21 November 2026. The show is described by the gallery as charting the breadth of Davenport’s practice through works on paper, early experimental pieces made after he graduated from Goldsmiths, and the Puddle Paintings for which he is best known.
The exhibition marks Davenport’s 11th solo show with Waddington Custot since his debut there in 1990. The gallery says the relationship began in 1988, after London dealer Leslie Waddington visited the Goldsmiths College of Art degree show and was encouraged to see the young artist by Michael Craig-Martin, Davenport’s tutor. That history gives 'Reflections' the character of a long-view account of a collaboration that has run alongside Davenport’s career for nearly four decades.
The presentation opens with 'Untitled (Large White)' (1991), a monumental canvas over 6 metres wide that was part of the body of work leading to Davenport’s Turner Prize nomination that year. The exhibition also includes two works from 'Erased Lines' (1988), a series in which household paint and white spirit were used to create translucent, dripping marks, as well as 'Electric Fan Studies' from 1989 and 2006, in which fans were used to spread gloss paint into thin strands.
Waddington Custot says the exhibition follows Davenport’s process-led approach through a range of methods developed over time. Among them are the 'Watering Can Drawings' (1992), made from diagonal trails of diluted household paint inspired by the movement of water from a hosepipe in a London garden, and the late-1990s and early-2000s arch and circle paintings, including 'Black, Red, Black (Arch)' (1998), in which paint was poured from the centre of a panel and the panels rotated to shape the flow.
The show also tracks the artist’s most recognisable mode of working: the poured lines made with syringes in precise colour sequences. Waddington Custot highlights the “paradox between control and chance” in this part of his practice, and includes works such as 'Black Puddle' (2010) and 'Blossom' (2023). Recent splatter paintings are presented as a counterpoint to the poured lines, described by the gallery as works full of “ricochets and splinters of colour.”
Among the pieces shown is 'Notation Chromatic' (2026), an acrylic-on-aluminium work mounted onto an aluminium panel. The exhibition is accompanied by a new publication offering broader insight into the ideas underpinning Davenport’s practice. It gathers previously published texts, essays and reviews by critics and art historians including Michael Bracewell, John Constable, Norman Rosenthal, Richard Shone, Michael Stanley, Jonathan Watkins and Sarah Whitfield, together with a conversation between Ian Davenport and his brother, the writer Philip Davenport, and the artist’s personal reflections. The catalogue is available to purchase on the gallery’s website.
