Kate Davis

Kate's work moves between material object, drawing, photography, video and text based works drawing equally on philosophical concepts and emotional responses, to pay testament to human experience through a formalised, invented language. The work explores mortality, matters of the heart and notions of intimacy often playing on the relationship between measured and experienced time. She also works collaboratively with the Scottish Artist David Moore under the name ME-WE Productions and we are investigating ideas around authorship and the sacrifice of the ego  in the production of collaborative artworks and events.

From the beginnings of her studies, Kate always worked across disciplines. Her work moves between material object, drawing, photography, video and text based works. Although she considers her core thinking to be centred in the discipline of sculpture. Central to all the work is a sense of her physical body and events at the edge of consciousness that speak of those moments before and beyond language, and deal with primordial or transformed states of being.

She draws equally on philosophical concepts and emotional responses, to pay testament to human experience through a formalised, invented language. The work explores mortality, matters of the heart and notions of intimacy often playing on the relationship between measured and experienced time.

Most works are made in response to a specific location or to a particular event and draw on personal experience, despite her constant attempts to avoid this. Hence there is a personal narrative running along the work’s underbelly, which forms a shadow beneath a more open and speculative interpretation.

In 2007, Kate Davis was invited by Dr Robert Woof to be artist in residence alongside poets at The Wordsworth Trust the centre for British Romanticism where she developed the body of work headhearthole which culminated in an exhibition, a music event and publication.  This established her work as simultaneously addressing the intellectual, the emotional, and the sexual.

In 2008 she began working collaboratively with the Scottish Artist David Moore and formalised the relationship  in 2010 by establishing ME-WE Productions. They are investigating ideas around authorship and the sacrifice of the ego in the production of collaborative artworks and events. This extends and feeds into both of their teaching practices and the exchange between the RCA sculpture programme and Edinburgh College of Art is a good example of this. Each year this exchange culminates in the on-going exhibition Narratives across Borders : a sculptural dialogue.

Davis and Moore completed a major commission for the Dockland Light Railway working with Modus Operandi in 2010.

This permanent installation, sited at Langdon Park Station consists of four artworks; an embedded drawing in the paving that commemorates and celebrates local personalities who campaigned for a new station, a text work running on the underside of the bridge canopy and a sculpture in two parts that run alongside both platforms. All the works are around the theme of belonging which emerged out of a series of community workshops. This led to winning the Water & Light commission at Riverlight, the new St James  residential development by architects Rogers and Stark in Nine Elms. For this they have developed a large narrative work that spans the whole 5 acre site and will be completed in 2017.

HIDE

Kate has received numerous awards and fellowships, including:

RCA Fellowship for Teaching (2009) 

Sydney Water Sculpture Prize (2002)

The first Jerwood Drawing Prize 1st prize (2001)

The SARGANT Fellowship, British School at Rome (1998)

Young Artist of the Year, Whitechapel Gallery (1989)

Stanley Picker Fellow at Kingston University, (1986).

Selected Public Speaking

2016  Looking Down the wrong End of the Telescope, Creative Differences, Dyslexia and Neurodiversity in Science, Art and Design, Royal College of Art & Imperial College

2015  Why Make, Fruitmarket Gallery  Edinburgh, Panel discussion with Phyllida Barlow , Keith Wilson, Eric Bainbridge and chaired by Jon Woods ,Henry Moore Institute.

2015 Public Sculpture: From Process to Place, Vitrine Gallery & Pangea Sculpture Centre, London

2015 Public Art and the Art of Collaboration, Panel, Caneletto Talks, Clerkenwell Design Week

2013 Constructed with Intention, Panel Discussion chaired by  Luisa Buck, Cornelius Foundation, France 

Residencies

2015–16 Double Pelican:  An experiment in Collaboration, StudioRCA ,Riverlight

2014 Davis & Moore Look Out Tower Aldeburgh

2013 Constructed with Intention ,Cornelius Foundation, Lagamas, France

2010–11 Artist residency La Joya- Arte + Ecologica  Los Gasquez, Spain

Selected Solo Exhibitions

2016 Twist Something Forcibly, Inaugural Artist for Deal Pier Arts Biennial, Kent

Double Pelican – an experiment in collaboration StudioRCA, London

2014 Artist’s House Aldeburgh, (ME-WE)

2012 Pica Pica, Patio Project 11, WW Gallery

All that I have (poems & collage), La Joya, Los Gazquez, Spain

2011 hhh, FRED [London]

2010 Riff  Kate Davis ,The Russian Club London

2008 lull FRED [London]

Selected Group Exhibitions

2016 Kicking an Elephant Through a Catflap, Royal College of Art

Allied Antagonists,  Newhailes House, Edinburgh

Drawing on Drawing, Sculpture Court, University of Edinburgh.

RCA Secret  London & Dubai

2015 Death and Dying, Kunstraum, Artenne,Austria

Death and Dying, Danielle Arnaud, London

Swedenborg Film Festival Re-launch, Featured artist, Swedenborg Society, London

Alchemy Film Festival, Hawick, Scotland, Invited Artist

Drawing Biennial 2015, Drawing Room, London.

de L’INTIME, Espace En Cours, Paris

WomanHouse, Studio RCA, London

2014 Death and Dying, MAG3 Projektraum, Austria

2013 The Model  Edinburgh University

Art in the Park, Nottingham

North South Divine, WW Gallery London & Platform A Gallery, Middlesbrough

Drawing Biennial 2013, Drawing Room, London (Top Pick)

Remix: Selections From the International Collage Center, Katonah Museum of Art, NY, USA

2012 House of Voltaire, Studio Voltaire

You are Ok? NSDM Shipyard, Amsterdam

Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy, London (Alison Wilding)

Postcards to Japan, Iwate Museum of Art, Fukushima Museum of Art, British Embassy, Tokyo, Japan & Touring

Gone Courting, Sculpture Court, Edinburgh

2011 Swedenborg Short Film Festival, Swedenborg Society, London (Winner of best experimental film.)

Remix: Selections From the International Collage Center, Samek Art Gallery, Bucknell University, PA

Tohoku-Scotland, Sculpture Court, Edinburgh College of Art

40 Artists: 80 Drawings, Burton Art Gallery & Museum ,Devon

FODO I, II & IV  WAC Gallery, London

Afternoon Tea, WW Gallery at the 54th Venice Biennale

Mrs Darling’s Kiss, Arch 402 gallery, London (ME-WE)

Maelstrom, Arch Gallery,Ramsgate

2010 Now & Then , Oliver Sears Gallery, Dublin

21, Harewood House, Leeds

Something Might Happen, The Forgotten Bar, Berlin

Super8station3 , Arnolfini, Bristol.

Me-We  Q1 Edinburgh

2009 Collage London/NewYork,  FRED [London]

Travelling Light, WW Gallery London  & Venice Biennale

Con-fig-u-ra-tion, Collyer Bristow Gallery, London

2008 Failed Love Story basta!- länderspie!  Gutleg 15 Ausstellungsraum, Frankfurt a.m., Germany

Roman Brain, Mulberry Flagship Store, London

Selected Press

Levonian Cole, T. (2013) 'How Developers can benefit from early partnerships with artists', Financial Times Oct 11

Mark Lawson with Joanne Harris (2010) FRONT ROW (21 at Harewood House), BBC Radio 4

Verhagen, M (2009) 'Collage London/New York', Art Monthly, Sept 09, 23–24 (illustration)

Norrie, K. (2008) 'Kate Davis: Lull', Art Monthly, May 08, 32 (illustration)

Phillipson, H. (2008) 'Kate Davis: Lull', a-n Magazine, May 08

Selected Solo Publications

David, K. (2008) headhearthole, London: Wordsworth Trust & Fred [London]

Selected Group Publications

Davis, K. and Moore, D. (2016) OrphanedThinking (Part One), London: Provocative Publishing 

David, K. (2013) Fan of Fans (of Fans), Jour Mal Jour Nal , 2 Zine Project

Brindley, K. (2013) North South Divine , WW Gallery London & Platform Gallery, Middlesbrough, London: WW Publications 

Macfarlane, K. (2013) Drawing Biennial 2013, London: Drawing Room Publications

Zoubok, P. (2013) Remix: Selections From the International Collage Center , Katonah Museum of Art, NY, USA, New York: ICC Publications 

Moore, D., Thomson, K. and Katagiri, H. (2011) Tohoku- Scotland exhibition catalogue, Ukishima Sculpture Studio

(2011) Afternoon Tea: Works on Paper, WW Gallery at the 54th VeniceBiennale,  Venice , Italy, London: WW Gallery Publication 

(2010) A Sculpture Walked into a Bar (Exhibition Guide), The Russian Club & Ian Hunt

Crewe, J. and Kivland, S. (eds) (2010)THE FRIEND (Transmission: HOST) Kate Davis & Julie Westerman, Lonond: Artwords Press

Norrie, K. (2009) 'Become: Secret Acts in the Work of Kate Davis', Performance Research: A Journal of the Performing Arts, 13, 3, 118–122 

Performative Lectures

2015 Beginnings are always Difficult , RCA

2014 Looking Down the Wrong End of a Telescope, RCA

2012 The Ego Squared:The Collaborative Process, La Joya, Spain (ME-WE)

2010 Red Snaps (Mouth), Museum Art Oxford 

(crossing closing –ladybridge)  Showroom Cinema, University of Sheffield

2009 Some references to red remembered, conjured or stolen while walking for 28 seconds , Dartmoor Arts, Kunstgewerbeschule, Lucerne, Switzerland, and Edinburgh College of Art, Scotland

Public Collections

The British Museum Drawing Collection, British Land, The Cranford Collection ,mima Middlesborough, The National Sculpture Centre, Poland, The Stanley Picker Collection, Campbelltown New City Gallery, Sydney, International Collage Center, Cornelius Foundation Collection, France, ASPEN, London/NewYork, Harewood House

Commissions

2016 Twist Something Forcibly, Davis & Moore, ME-WE, Inaugural Artists, Deal Pier Arts, Kent

First Lines, Oxford Library Commission, Westgate, Oxford, Modus Operandi, Short listed artist

2011–17 LightHouse, Light & Water Commission, St James & Futurecity, Riverlight,London

2013 Random 1, Art In Your Park, University Park, Nottingham

2012 Pica Pica, Patio Projects, 11 WW Gallery, London

2010 Knew Red, Kendrew Commission, St Johns College, Oxford University, Short listed artist

EVE, 21, Harewood House, Leeds

2009 Taking  a line for  a walk with an acrostic poem, Lead Artist, Dartmoor Arts

2007–10 Belonging Langdon Park Station, Dockland Light Railway Art, Mayor of London & Modus Operandi

Panel Discussions and Public Speaking

Davis, K. (2016) 'Looking Down the wrong End of the Telescope', Creative Differences, Dyslexia and Neurodiversity in Science, Art and Design, Royal College of Art & Imperial College

Davis, K. (2015) 'Fancy, Fell, Find, Why Make' (public roundtable), Fruitmarket, Edinburgh On occasion of solo exhibition by  Phyllida Barlow

Davis, K. (2015) 'Grand Auto Theft', (invited interlocuter), Public Sculpture: From Process to Place,Vitrine Gallery & Pangea Sculpture Centre, London

Davis, K. (2015) 'Unintended Collaborations; Embedded Artwork in the City', (public roundtable), Public Realm and the Art of Collaboration, Caneletto Talks, Clerkenwell Design Week, London  

Davis, K. (2013) 'Cicada Cha Cha Cha, Constructed with Intention' (public discussion and reading), Cornelius Foundation, France

Other activities

2016   How to be a Board Member, Training , Arts and Business, Scotland.

2014  Invited onto Board of Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop, Edinburgh, Scotland

• (2009) Initiator of a student exchange between the University of Edinburgh and RCA and was promoted to Senior Tutor in 2014. Davis was instrumental in setting up StudioRCA, an external project space for RCA Fine Art at Riverlight, Nine Elms in partnership with the developers St James and Futurecity.
  
• External examiner at Northampton University and was invited on to the Board of Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop  in 2014 and has undertaken How to be a Board Member Training at Arts and Business, Scotland.

Selection Panels

• 2015  Micro-residencies, Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop
• 2012  WW SOLO Award, WW Gallery, London
• Deutsche Bank Award, RCA, London
• 2010 Unfeasibility Study, Mare Street Biennale, London