2010
Museums and Galleries
Foyer Museum, School of Physics, University of Sydney , Sydney Australia
Memorial/Double Pump/Laplace II
2009
Site Specific
Maitland Regional Gallery, Maitland Australia
Intangible Collection,2009, rice paper, wood, video, sound, video, paint, ink, photographs, found objects historical items on loan, oral histories, an installation 7.8 x 20metres was commissioned by the Gallery Director Joe Eisenberg OAM for the official opening in 2009 of the new exhibition spaces and buildings.
This exhibition examined the former uses of the heritage Art Gallery building as a TAFE educational facility incorporating a museum open to the general public. It uses a wide range of archival material from sources such as the Powerhouse Museum, the Australian Museum, the Mitchell Library, State Records and local oral histories.
The Oral Histories were collected prior to the Exhibition from people who had some experience with the building in a range of capacities. Their experiences as students, teachers, museum visitors, cleaners etc are not recorded in the official history. This exhibition layers these experiences back into the architecture of the site.
The title “ Intangible Collection” refers to valuing both the objects, (the historical fabric of the building and the museum artefacts on display) and the lived experience as expressed in the oral histories. These memories of the building help to make up a more complex history of its usage.
The Gallery Director Joe Eisenberg writes in his catalogue essay on this work that “ in Intangible Collections Davies is both confronting and awe inspiring in her overall statement that pays homage to a museum that was purpose built and then discontinued in less than fifty years as a result of a flood that also ruined quite a number of the original objects. Later he also write that In her inimitable style Davies has produced a rather beautiful and touching installation, but at the same time produced an art work which also poses questions and problems so that it becomes engaging for the viewer.
Lincoln College Chapel, Oxford University, UK
Memorial/Double Pump/Laplace III
Parramatta Riverside, Parramatta, Sydney Australia
Collaborative project with Patricia Prociv called Neither Thrived
Museums and Galleries
2008
The Gallery at Parramatta Artist Studios, Parramatta, Sydney, Australia
As both artist and curator for a suite of three exhibitions Death 1, 2, and 3, I selected my work Memorial/Time of Death, 2008, video, 3’30” for the group exhibition Death 1 - Looking at Others.
Blacktown Arts Centre, Blacktown Australia
The Installation Memorial/ When I was Younger was commissioned by the Blacktown Arts Centreas a response to the history of the former school buildings. The installation was made of several independent works. They were
Memorial / Centenary Celebrations 1971, 2007 paint on fabric 1500 x 920mm
Memorial / Roll Call Girls 1971, 2007 chalk on fabric 1500 x 920m
Memorial / Roll Call Boys 1971, 2007 chalk on fabric 1500 x 920mm
Memorial / Roll Call Boys and Girls 1914, 2007 Chalk on fabric 1500 x 920mm
Memorial / Class Sizes 1929, 2007 Chalk on fabric 1500 x 920mm
Memorial / Cooking #1 1928, 2007 paint on fabric 1500 x 920mm
Memorial / Cooking #2 1928, 2007 paint on fabric, 1500 x 920mm
Memorial / Telegram to Mr. Wilkins 9th March 1881, 2007 paint on fabric 1500 x 920mm
Memorial / Handmade Dress, 2007 satin ribbon 200 x 150mm each (3 Panels)
Memorial / Class Photos, photographs on paper various years
300 x 210mm each (6 Panels)
Memorial / Cuts 1938, 2007 photographs on paper 300 x 210mm each (6 Panels)
Memorial / Memory of Roll Call, 2007 video and sound 22 minutes
Memorial / When I was Younger, 2007 chalk on blackboard dimensions variable by various artists
For this installation at the former Blacktown Public School I worked with the voices and names of those who worked and were schooled in this building the oldest surviving building in the Blacktown Central Business District. The art academic Elin Howe wrote in the concluding paragraph of her catalogue essay that ..
‘All of our official histories are under contemporary review and historians are realising that artists, with their focus on subjective experience in memory, are opening new paths to the reinterpretation of history. Davies’ practice is beneficial here because she does not succumb to two of the main pitfalls of this approach – flimsy research and the temptation to aestheticise the material by showcasing her own artistic skill. ‘
2006
Museums and Galleries
Esa Jaske Gallery, Chippendale, Sydney Australia
My installation Water / Flower of Another was installed in the front Project Space of the Esa Jaske Gallery.
When I was growing up, a pink camellia grew in full sun by the front gate of our house. I don’t remember it ever looking very happy but it was prized as a plant that was difficult to grow. Its less than impressive appearance was tolerated in order to obtain the once a year flowers which my mother floated in a Japanese bowl in the middle of the dining room table.
During the seventeen hundreds, camellias along with many other plants seen as exotic or desirable were taken from parts of China and Japan and the material transferred to other cultures and places worldwide. The works, Water/ Flower of Another use fragments to trace and re-trace the imposed patterns of the past – the colonial – on the present where control of plant material still forms an important component of the economic and cultural landscape. They look at the patterns of difference, the relationships between influence and appropriation within this context and form part of my continued investigation into these issues and the development of an ethical framework within which I can make work.
Site Specific
St Marks Anglican Church Aberdeen NSW Australia
Memorial/Double Pump Laplace I, 2006, installation, textile, found objects, thread and buttons.
This is a reflection on making this work that I wrote several years after this exhibition.
‘While an element of my practice has always been an engagement with community in the process of producing art, I reflected that often for me the production of the physical art object whether it be sound, video, installation, object whatever is then layered with additional engagement by a community post production. The physical work ” the art’ serves as a touch stone or means of putting an idea to a group or individual and then watching and waiting for the response. This process of engagement mostly in terms of conversation then becomes a totally ephemeral un-documented art work in its own right layered on top of the initial physical art.
My formative experience of this process was by accident. I hadn’t thought it through. I hadn’t designed it in any way. Following the medicalised death of my father I made an installation in the church of the town where he grew up. Aberdeen in NSW is a former meat works town of about 1500, now a dormitory suburb for the coal mines further down the valley. I had originally approached the rector about putting an installation in the church hall and his response was to suggest moving it into the church. Coincidentally on the day I opened the show the town’s pumpkin festival was being celebrated in the closed off street next to the church. That resulted in a lot of people coming to the exhibition without it being a big deal for them and coming almost by accident. With every group that came in I talked about the background to the installation i.e. the death and dying of my father. Nearly all of the visitors told me in response stories from their lives about when they watched and waited as someone died in intensive care, in emergency, at home wherever. These stories were the response that would not be shared between us without the physical presence of the art installation combined with the stories I told of my father’s death.’