Image: Holly Davey, Stage Flat no_1 (After Ann Henderson), The Unforgetting, Fruitmarket, Edinburgh, 2024
Seeing Women Artists in Collection and Archival Spaces
Artist, Holly Davey will share her ongoing research and art practice into the occupation of archives and collection spaces by women artists. At the core of her practice are ideas surrounding absence, place & the body. She produces installations that include photography, sculpture, text, video and performance. In this lunchtime talk, she will discuss her approach to several commissions including the recent ongoing development of a performance work for the British School at Rome 125th birthday celebration in November 2026. This research focuses on the re:seeing of women sculptors who attended the school as part of the sculpture prize. Davey will share her archival findings and the collaborative development of this research into an artwork. This research is supported partly by Wales Arts International, The Arts Council of Wales and The British School at Rome.
About:
Recent solo exhibitions: Amongst Visions, UCL Art Museum, London (2025) The Unforgetting, Fruitmarket, Edinburgh, (2024); In Plain Sight, FfotoCymru Commission, National Museum Wales, (2024); and A Script for an Archive: Women, REWIND Collection, University of Dundee, (2022). She has attended residencies both nationally and internationally, and had several commissions at heritage settings including The Holburne Museum, Bath; A La Ronde, Exeter; and Plymouth Museum and Art Gallery, Plymouth.
In 2019, Davey was a Creative Wales Fellow at The British School at Rome. In 2021, she commenced a LAHP funded practice - based PhD at The Slade School of Fine Art, London. Davey's PhD research is focused on re:seeing women artists in collection and archival spaces. She has been researching the Slade Collection of prize - winning drawings housed at UCL Art Museum and rediscovered the work and lives of women artists who have been marginalised due to disability, gender and social expectations of marriage and motherhood.
In 2025, Davey was nominated for a Paul Hamlyn Visual Arts Award.
In 1998, she graduated from Goldsmiths College with a BA Hons in Fine Art and in 2014, she received her MA Contemporary Dialogues from Swansea College of Art. Davey is based between Cardiff and London. She has over twenty five years experience working as an art educator, facilitator and workshop leader, and currently offer coaching and mentoring to creative individuals.