Ratty Nye Davies’ practice is an endeavour in ‘world-building’, telling abstract narratives of loss, betrayal, heartbreak through live performance, poetry, set-design and drawing. The tales she tells are a crude remix of personal truths and bastardised fictional histories.
Davies references opera, pre-christian pagan mythologies and biblical texts that centre around femme-focused tales of subjugation, using characters found as vehicles to discuss personal experience, formulating ways to live out poetic revenge fantasies.
Through performing the character of ‘ratty byebye’, a woman who exists beyond and in between constructs of fantasy and reality, she is both performer and character simultaneously. ‘ratty byebye’ is the constructed fantasy that allows Ratty as truthful artist, sister and daughter to explore her ‘true’ self. The ‘in-between-ness’ of non-linear definition of her own trans* body allows her to project truths into the fantasies she creates.
The work is performed both in queer nightclub spaces and traditional gallery spaces. By performing typically ‘theatrical’ or ‘cabaret’ style shows in a gallery space, the work is as much Entertainment as serious Fine Art. By presenting sculpture or installation into the club space for performance, the work challenges the limitations and flexibilities that both, differing, spaces and audiences can bring to poetic story-telling.