Simon Davidson ‘Salt and Smoke’ Exhibition
It’s easy to imagine that Simon Davidson grew up playing with a lot of Hot Wheels in the sandpit. As a photographer, he’s built a career taking pictures of cars and capturing a beauty most would miss. ‘Salt and Smoke’ is the name of his new exhibition, which you can check out for free at Bondi Pavilion Art Gallery from February 28 to March 11.
From the lunar-like landscapes of Bonneville salt lake in Utah and Lake Gairdner in South Australia, to the tiny burnout pads dotted around Australia, Davidson has clocked up some serious mileage (and a thick layer of dust) shooting hot-rods, muscle cars and the plumes of smoke they leave in their wake. Teetering a fine line between destruction and creation, there’s something wild about the phenomenon, which sits somewhere between performance, fetish and sport.
Davidson’s images are equally beguiling. With obvious affection he captures these rev heads and their noisy, pimped out rides in a stunning new colour saturated light. In such a macho culture of man and machine, Davidson manages to find fragility in the soft clouds of smoke and unnerving stillness of salt lake in that moment before the dust storm.
