About Visual Artist Jenny Davis

Bio - CV - Exhibition History

A rustic metal shed with its door open, surrounded by trees and greenery. A small platform with a black animal sitting on it, and a white radio or speaker on the platform. The ground has some scattered bricks and dry leaves.
An artist with blonde hair and glasses, wearing a magenta shirt and purple scarf, stands in front of three large abstract paintings inside an art studio. The paintings feature bold, colorful, and expressive brushstrokes with a mix of dark and vibrant colors.
Interior of an art studio or workshop with paintings, art supplies, and various objects cluttered on tables and shelves, with windows letting in natural light.
Artist C/V
Artist's Story

Artist Bio

Jenny Davis is a Australian based visual artist who’s practice spans painting, sculpture, mixed media, fibre/textile and installation. Born in Melbourne Victoria, she studied at Swinburne University gaining the Associated Diploma in Visual Arts in1994 and accepted into Vic College of Arts ( sculpture and painting) She has studied under numerous masters, including, Shane Merry and Annette Iggulden and awarded an arts residency in Spain, several arts grants and has been a finalist in many, including John Leslie Prize and Doug Moran.

Jenny has travelled extensively and exhibited her work widely, both nationally and internationally in Australia, New York, Berlin, Venice Biennale 57, UK and Paris, with work held in various private and public collections in Australia, USA, UK, Canada & EU, including, Can Serrat International Arts Center Barcelona, Spain, Rydges Hotel Group Australia and the museum's of, Shenandoah Valley and California Center for the Arts, Escondido, in the USA.

Jenny Davis is a multidisciplinary abstract artist working across painting, collage, drawing, sculpture, and fiber-based media. Her work explores the layered relationship between memory, decay, renewal, and identity — using paint, antique textiles, found objects, and weathered materials to give form to histories both personal and collective.

At the heart of Jenny’s practice is a deep embrace of imperfection. Her abstract paintings often feel intuitive, emotionally raw, and at times, childlike — expressing vulnerability through mark-making, texture, and spontaneous gesture. Balancing minimalist restraint with moments of chaotic energy and texture, each piece is a negotiation between control and surrender.

The resulting work feels like unearthed relics — intimate, imperfect, and alive with the tension between past and present.

Artist’s Statement

I am primarily a painter and sculptor, though my practice extends across mixed media, collage, textile, installation, and video. My work explores the intersections of abstraction, urban decay, inherited history, and the traces of human presence over time. I am drawn to the spaces where material and memory converge—where the physical world dissolves into gesture, surface, and texture, evoking both presence and loss.

Working intuitively, I experiment with found objects and vintage textiles, embedding traces of time through rust, ink, pigment, and stitching. These materials carry the residue of lived and inherited histories, becoming vessels for reflection on fragility, transformation, and renewal.

Influences from material abstraction, Arte Povera, and feminist textile traditions sit alongside the work of artists such as Anni Albers, Louise Bourgeois, Antoni Tàpies, Cy Twombly and the wider lineage of abstract expressionism. Their impact threads through my practice as I embrace imperfection, chance, and the gentle poetry within decay.

Each piece unfolds as a tactile archive—an evolving surface that reflects on impermanence, the endurance of memory, and the ways history continues to shape contemporary life.

Studio

Outlook8studio is multidisciplinary art studio, built by artist Jenny Davis from discarded and recycled materials in 2000. The studio is based in Victoria, Australia, specialising in the creation of original, thought-provoking artworks, while striving to recycle materials that minimize the impact on the environment and are less harmful to the earth.