Holly Davey

Sometimes I feel so unattached that the only consciousness I hold is - that I am in the world. It is strange to move along in silence, an unknown land and among strangers.
                          Frances Jennings, A Tour in a Donkey Cart, The Bodley Head (1921)

Central to Amongst Visions is the research I have undertaken as part of my PhD research at the Slade School of Fine Art, London. My work explores ideas around the body, place and absence. I have spent four years embedded in the Slade Collection at UCL Art Museum, researching the work of women artists for a PhD, Re: Seeing Women Artists in Collection and Archival Spaces. 

In 2023, I came across a box marked ‘Jennings’. Inside were 92 drawings by a student from 1905-1908 called Frances Jennings. The life drawings depict groups of children, men, women and babies. They are light touch in their style, a simple outline, a sketch, yet they hold the intense emotion of the body, the weight of limbs, a fleeting record of the sitters’ soul - all floating in nothing, they have an other-worldly quality, like a series of imaginary visions. Completely gripped by the emotion of these drawings, and the desire to know more, I have spent the past 18 months researching her life and work and produced artworks. 

This exhibition comprises the drawings by Frances Jennings, and a series of loose collages; a script; and a video work, made in response to Frances’s work. 

My research is supported by London Arts & Humanities Partnership funding.

For more information: 

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/museums-collections/news/2025/nov/interview-revealing-hidden-life-slade-school-alumna-part-1

www.ucl.ac.uk/museums-collections/ucl-art-museum

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