Category: Holly Davey

Research for ‘A Script for an Archive: Women’

The artist’s introduction to her work

The video is a recording of Holly Davey’s presentation introducing A Script for an Archive: Women, at the artwork’s launch on 31st January 2022.

Further reading and links to relevant material in the REWIND Archive

A list of resources and research material used by the artist during her research for A Script for an Archive: Women:

Linda Nochlin: ‘From 1971: Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?’, ArtNEWS, 2015. A revised version of an article originally published in 1971.

‘A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects’. A Wikipedia page about one of the earliest works of feminist philosophy written in 1972 by Molly Wollstonecraft.

Why Were Women Written Out of History? An Interview with Bettany Hughes. [blog post] English-heritage.org, 2016.

Links to interviews and information about artworks in the REWIND archive that Holly’s work took inspiration from

Jackie Hatfield’s interview with Catherine Elwes, 2006.

Catherine Elwes: The Critics Informed Viewing, 1982.

Jackie Hatfield’s interview with Tina Keane, March 2005.

Tina Keane: Hands, 1974.

Tina Keane: Bedtime Story, 1982.

Maggie Warwick’s interview with Judith Goddard, March 2007.

Judith Goddard: Lyrical Doubt, 1984.

Transcription of Maggie Warwick’s interview with Rose Garrard, April 2008.

Rose Garrard: Pandora, The Bringer of Gifts, 1983.

Rose Garrard: Tumbled Frame, 1984

Jackie Hatfield’s interview with Katherine Meynell, June 2006.

Katherine Meynell: Medusa, 1988.

A Script for an Archive:Women (performance)

This is the script performed and recorded live on Zoom as part of the artwork’s launch on 31st January 2021.

It is a live reading of the script by two actors. The work is the personification of Archive and Process as two women, having a conversation about women in archival spaces, why we are missing and what could an archive of the future be? The work was made over Zoom to a live audience in one take and incorporates the limitations of the technology and making work via the internet.

CREDITS:

‘A Script for an Archive: Women’ was commissioned for online display at www.curatinglivingarchives.network as part of ‘What Is A Living Archive. Curating the ‘unruly’ materiality of Contemporary Art’, a research project led by Dr Judit Bodor with Adam Lockhart, 2021.

ARCHIVE resources: REWIND Artist’s Video Archive, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design, University of Dundee.

ARTISTS’ WORKS REFERENCED: Catherine Elwes, Judith Goddard, Katherine Meynell, Rose Garrard, Tina Keane.

CURATOR: Dr. Judit Bodor, Baxter Fellow, Curatorial Practice, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design, University of Dundee.

ARCHIVIST: Adam Lockhart, Media Art Archivist and Lecturer, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design, University of Dundee.

WRITING MENTOR: Professor Maria Fusco, Chair of Interdisplinary Writing at University of Dundee.

ACTORS: Polly Kilpatrick & Rebecca Knowles.

TECHNICAL SUPPORT: Naomi Van Dijck, Mark Gubb, Anthony Shapland, g39, Cardiff.

SPECIAL THANKS: Rich Robinson, Emily Speed, Nick Thornton.

Sketch no. 5. (for stage flat)

Holly Davey, Sketch no.5 (for stage flat), digital collage, 2021

Sketch no. 2 (for stage flat), was inspired by the work of Judith Goddard, Lyrical Doubt (Accessible in the REWIND Artists’ Video Archive at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design, University of Dundee, by appointment). Goddard’s process of layering video images, with the silhouette of one image underneath another, echoed ideas Davey had been exploring in the studio with postcard cutouts of women by male artists. This digital collage is made in photoshop from an image of Renior’s, La Parisienne and an image of women protesting during 2021 about political and social events.

Sketch no.4. (for stage flat)

Holly Davey, Sketch no.4. (for stage flat), digital collage, 2021.

Sketch no.4 (for stage flat) was inspired by the work of Judith Goddard, Lyrical Doubt [accessible in the REWIND Artists’ Video Archive at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design, University of Dundee, by appointment]. Goddard’s process of layering video images, with the silhouette of one image underneath another, echoed ideas Davey had been exploring in the studio with postcard cutouts of women by male artists. This digital collage is made in photoshop from an image of Edgar Degas’s, Dancer looking at the sole of her right foot, and an image of women protesting during 2021 about political and social events.

Sketch no.2. (for stage flat)

Holly Davey, Sketch no.2. (for stage flat), digital collage, 2021.

Sketch no. 2 (for stage flat), was inspired by the work of Judith Goddard, Lyrical Doubt (Accessible in the REWIND Artists’ Video Archive at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design, University of Dundee, by appointment). Goddard’s process of layering video images, with the silhouette of one image underneath another, echoed ideas Davey had been exploring in the studio with postcard cutouts of women by male artists. This digital collage is made in photoshop from an image of Renior’s, La Parisienne and an image of women protesting during 2021 about political and social events.

A Script for an Archive: Women (script)

Click here to view the PDF

The ‘Script for an Archive: Women’ was typed between October-December 2021 and only exist as a digital document. It includes an imagined conversation between two female characters ‘Archive’ and ‘Process’ and directorial instructions by the ‘Narrator’. The Script was performed live on Zoom on the 31st January, 2022.

Artist Commission: ‘A Script for an Archive: Women’

by Judit Bodor, 2021

Image credit: Stills from Rose Garrard: Tumbled Frame, 1984, Catherine Elwes: The Critics Informed Viewing, 1982, and Katharine Meynell: Medusa, 1988. Courtesy of the REWIND Archive, DJCAD, University of Dundee, and the artists.

A Script for an Archive by Holly Davey is a recent body of work that the artist developed since 2019 mainly through large-scale installations including photography, sculpture, text, video and performance in exhibitions at The British School of Rome and the Danielle Arnaud Gallery in London and Chapter Art Centre gallery in Cardiff. Through this body of work, the artist explores – often marginalised – female voices within archival spaces.

A new artwork A Script for an Archive: Women has been commissioned through an Open Call as part of our Curating Living Archives research project in 2021 with funding from the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

For this new commission, Holly proposed researching women artists in the REWIND Artists Video Archive focusing in particular on works by Catherine Elwes, Tina Keane, Rose Garrard, Judith Goddard and Katherine Meynell.

Holly often explores ideas surrounding absence, place, and the body within her practice. She works predominately with archives and collections to explore the heritage of lost, marginalised or forgotten social histories embedded in these collections, especially around women’s lives.

A Script for an Archive: Women is an attempt to unlock REWIND’s potential as a feminist archive and at the same time address issues around the representation of gender in archival spaces in general. The work connects the experience of women and women artists past and present to confront us with the question ‘How would you like the future to be?’

Part of the curatorial brief to the artist was to consider our project’s website, curatinglivingarchives.network, as the platform through which the new artwork will be primarily experienced. Using the website as such was not only practical given COVID-19 related restrictions on physical spaces, but also strategic to engage wider audiences with our media art collections at DJCAD which are only accessible by appointment.

We worked with Holly to develop her new work to be presented and experienced fully and only online. The artwork’s launch event (31 January 2022) was the only time the work was performed live. The recorded performance, the script and the digital collages have been accessioned into our collection and will remain accessible through this website as a multi-component digital artwork, including a script, the recorded performance, and a series of digital collages [follow the links on this page].

/excerpts from Judit Bodor’s introduction to the artwork as part of the artwork launch, 31 January 2022, Zoom/.



About the artist: Holly Davey

Holly Davey: Scene no. 7. 2020. 31.5 cm x 20.5 cm. Original photograph from the Bulwer Collection, The British School of Rome, red lighting gel, bulldog clip.

Since graduating from Goldsmith College, London, Holly Davey has exhibited across the UK and internationally. Recent exhibitions include A Script for an Archive, at Chapter, Cardiff, (2021); Danielle Arnaud Gallery, London, (2020); and The British School of Rome, Rome, (2019); as well as in 2018, The Conversation, at g39, Cardiff, and The Hardwick Gallery, Cheltenham Spa; and Charcoal is the Colour of Absence, The Newbridge Project, Newcastle.

She received a Creative Wales Award in 2017 and was the Creative Wales Fellow at The British School of Rome in 2019. She is currently studying for a PhD at The Slade School of Fine Art, London.

EXCERPTS FROM THE PROPOSAL

“I will use this opportunity to radically think about how we can approach working with archival material, changing the assumed narrative into something more real, truthful and complete. Most archives only tell half the story of their content, often marginalising women’s voices, even if they are there. I approached this commission by inverting/reimaging the already existing female narrative, readdressing the gender balance with the archive and revealing something currently unseen.”

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