Adam Davies

Reroutings: Acts of Dissent

Drawn from photographs made in the cities of Baltimore and Pittsburgh, Reroutings: Acts of Dissent explores the relationship between graffiti and public infrastructure. The photographs encourage multiple, often contradictory, interpretive possibilities encouraging the viewer to consider how to read these acts of mark-making: Are they humorous? Speaking truth-to-power? Cries for help? The photographs highlight the tensions between the marks, the structures that act as their visual supports, and the surrounding landscapes. This layered triumvirate of language, structure, and setting subversively hints at a youth culture that is simultaneously nostalgic and angry, melancholic and perceptive.

Introductory Quote

But how you twist and turn, so that … you inevitably always manage to introduce some little word or phrase that is not your own, and which awakens disturbing recollections.

— Sören Kierkegaard

Portfolio

Seneca Mill (Ladder), Maryland pigment print 178 × 142 cm 70" × 56" 2015
Painted ladder on the ruins of a stone mill.
Smedley Park (Face), Philadelphia pigment print 178 × 142 cm 70" × 56" 2016
Eyes and mouth painted on the base of a tree under Philadelphia's Blue Route.
Gerst Way (Pain is all in your mind!), Pittsburgh pigment print 142 × 178 cm 56" × 70" 2018
Phrase written on the floor of a pedestrian overpass in north Pittsburgh.
Bloomfield Bridge (Paintballs), Pittsburgh pigment print 142 × 178 cm 56" × 70" 2017
Multi-colored paint splattered on the pier of the bridge.
North Avenue Bridge (Seven Heads), Baltimore pigment print 142 × 178 cm 56" × 70" 2018
Painted heads on a large pile of rocks placed under historic bridge.
Leakin Park (Inverted Sign), Baltimore pigment print 142 × 178 cm 56" × 70" 2018
In winter, on a road passing through the historic park, a driving sign indicating sharp turns has been turned upside down.
Patapsco Valley Park (Always Lost), Baltimore pigment print 142 × 178 cm 56" × 70" 2018
Winter landscape, on right a railway line runs through trees, on a signal box are hobo symbols and the graffiti 'always lost'.
George Washington Memorial Parkway (Eptic.the.Skeptiik), Northern Virginia pigment print 142 × 178 cm 56" × 70" 2018
Directly under the deck of a highway looking over the valley below, graffiti in painted on top of a pier.
Loch Raven Boulevard (Two Faces), Baltimore pigment print 178 × 142 cm 70" × 56" 2016
Looking under the arch of a bridge, a ghost is painted on the nearer pier a woman's head at on the pier further away.
Greenbrier Bridge (Fuck U), West Virginia pigment print 178 × 142 cm 70" × 56" 2016
In a winter mist, text painted high in a difficult to access part of a pier on a highway bridge.
Kelly Avenue Bridge (Whitewash), Baltimore pigment print 142 × 178 cm 56" × 70" 2018
Underneath an arched railway bridge in Baltimore, piers are whitewashed to cover graffiti.
Jones Falls (Black Lives = Merde Ville), Baltimore pigment print 178 × 142 cm 70" × 56" 2019
Text painted on cement barricade on a side road next to the falls. The text is by two different hands.