Practice & About
Introduction
Artist Statement • Biography • CV • Exhibitions
Introduction
For almost four decades, abstraction has been the foundation of my practice and my way of understanding the world. Working across painting, sculpture, textiles, found materials, artist books, collage, and assemblage, I follow a process-led approach guided by intuition, curiosity, and discovery.
My work explores memory, place, material histories, inheritance, and transformation. I am drawn to the traces left behind by people, objects, and environments, and to the stories embedded within weathered surfaces, found materials, and fragments of lived experience. Rather than describing the world literally, I seek to uncover its essence—exploring what lies beneath appearances and what remains through time.
While the materials and forms have evolved throughout my career, a consistent thread connects the work: an enduring interest in abstraction as a way of exploring human experience, memory, and meaning. Through layering, collecting, assembling, and transforming materials, I create works that invite reflection, connection, and multiple interpretations.
Artist Statement
Jenny Davis is a multidisciplinary artist based in the Yarra Valley, Victoria, Australia. Over a practice spanning almost four decades, she has worked across painting, sculpture, textiles, artist books, collage, assemblage, photography, video, and installation. Grounded in abstraction, her work explores memory, place, inheritance, and material histories through intuitive, process-led methods of making.
Using paint, found objects, salvaged materials, antique textiles, and weathered surfaces, Davis investigates the traces left by people, places, and time. Through acts of layering, excavation, repair, and reconstruction, her work considers how histories persist, shift, and find new forms of expression.
Jenny Davis has exhibited nationally and internationally, including at the National Gallery of Victoria (Melbourne, Australia), Switchback Gallery at Monash University Gippsland (Victoria, Australia), Carteret Contemporary Gallery (North Carolina, USA), Can Serrat International Arts Centre (El Bruc, Barcelona, Spain), and TPTP Space (Montmartre, Paris, France) Berlin. Germany and New York, USA. Her work is held in collections including Can Serrat International Arts Centre (Barcelona, Spain), Rydges Hotel Group (Australia), the Museum of the Shenandoah Valley and the California Center for the Arts, Escondido (USA), as well as private collections across Australia, the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, and Europe. Davis has participated in projects and exhibitions including the Landfill Art Project (USA), the John Leslie Art Prize at Sale Regional Art Gallery (Victoria, Australia), John Baldessari: Name in Lights at Monnaie de Paris (Paris, France), and the 57th Venice Biennale through The Biennale Project (Venice, Italy).
Abstraction has always been the language through which I make sense of the world. I am interested in what exists beyond description: the atmosphere of a place, the residue of memory, the passage of time, and the traces embedded within materials and objects.
The process of making is central to my practice. Rather than working towards a predetermined outcome, I allow the work to emerge through an ongoing dialogue with materials. Layering, erosion, reconstruction, collecting, and transformation become ways of uncovering meaning rather than illustrating it. Intuition, chance, and discovery play an essential role in this process.
Across painting, sculpture, textiles, artist books, collage, assemblage, and found materials, I return repeatedly to questions of memory, place, inheritance, and material histories. Whether working with paint, weathered surfaces, salvaged textiles, inherited books, or personal archives, I am drawn to what remains — the fragments, traces, and connections that endure through time.
At its core, my practice is an exploration of essence: a search for what lies beneath appearances and for the stories held within people, places, and materials. Through abstraction, I seek not to describe the world as it appears, but to evoke the deeper experiences, memories, and relationships that shape how it is felt and understood.