MARS Gallery Announces Representation of Takatāpui Artist J Davies

MARS Gallery has confirmed that artist J Davies will join its roster, marking a significant addition to the gallery’s growing cohort of contemporary Australian voices. Known for an expansive photographic archive documenting queer culture and community, Davies’ work examines intimacy, identity and neurodiversity through a deeply personal lens. Their inaugural solo exhibition with MARS is scheduled for 2026.

Davies’ practice opens a candid window into moments of unapologetic queerness, foregrounding relationships, bodies and lived experience. The work challenges conventional depictions of queer identity, instead offering space for personal narratives shaped by love, connection and belonging. Central to the practice is an exploration of time and memory, informed in part by a 2021 diagnosis of a processing disorder that blurred the boundaries between dreams and waking life. This sensibility permeates Davies’ imagery, which often shifts between diaristic immediacy and reflective distance.

Working primarily with photography, Davies documents their own life and the communities around them, assembling large constellations of images that highlight the multiplicity of queer experience. Presented en masse, these photographs question entrenched social norms around sexuality, gender and intimacy while celebrating the tenderness, playfulness and fluid physicality that define queer relational worlds.

MARS Gallery Director Andy Dinan said Davies’ work “captures the fluidity and vibrancy of queer culture in Melbourne,” noting its growing recognition nationally and internationally. “J’s work makes me want to know more now, and that means they are perfect for the MARS family. Their practice contributes to a vital queer legacy that resonates not only within Australia but globally.”

Davies has exhibited widely, including in the National Gallery of Victoria’s Melbourne Now, PHOTO22, and The National Photographic Portrait Prize at the National Portrait Gallery. They have been a multiple-time finalist in the Bowness Photography Prize at the Museum of Australian Photography, and have presented work internationally at Les Rencontres d’Arles in France and the Hong Kong International Photography Festival.

Davies’ forthcoming 2026 solo exhibition at MARS will mark their first major presentation with the gallery.