Holly Davey
Image Credit: A Script for an Archive, installation detail, Chapter, Cardiff, 2021.
Current Work:
A Script for an Archive:
This body of work was first exhibited at Danielle Arnaud Gallery, London in 2020, after a fellowship at The British School at Rome in 2019. The work has continued to evolve and was most recently shown at Chapter, Cardiff in 2021 with a live reading of the script by two actors.
This approach continued to develop and in 2022, A Script for an Archive: Women, a new body of work was made in response to a commission at the University of Dundee. After researching the REWIND archive, a collection of video works from the 1970's and 80's, the work produced reimagined this collection as a feminists archive, bringing attention to the work by women artists, developing a series of responses from digital collages, a script between two women Archive and Process, and a live online zoom performance. For live zoom performance of script, please click: https://curatinglivingarchives.network/live-performance/
Artist Statement:
My research focuses on absence, place and body. I work with photography, sculpture and performance to explore the forgotten lives of women within collections and archival space. I work online and in library / museum settings, developing a series of visual motifs to represent their absence. This research develops from drawings to maquettes to large scale installations. Using the language of film production, my installations include a series of reimagined fragments from the archive as dysfunctional props, incomplete costumes and semi – constructed stage flats, that altogether create a new version of the archive for the audience to inhabit both physically and conceptually. Underpinning this, the script becomes the mechanism for reanimating the voices within the archive and forms the basis for in -person and online performances.