Penny Davis

Born in Portsmouth, UK, Penny Davis is an artist, solo mother of three children and PhD candidate currently working in drawing, performance to video and autoethnography to explore maternal embodiment. Davis is a is a member of IAMAS and as a political maternal activist her arts practice works to highlight inequities for single mothers alongside working with organisations to support Single Parents Rights. Graduating from Chelsea College of Art (UAL) in 1999, and the Slade School of Art (UCL) in 2001, Davis was also a resident at Skowhegan (USA) in 2004 and The Edward Albee Foundation (USA) in 2005. She has exhibited both nationally and internationally and her work is held in public and private collections.

As an academic she regularly presents at conferences and has recently published an article about her practice in the Journal of Motherhood Initiative and has contributed to the Domestic Academics project with Vanessa Marr (2021). Davis is an active member of the Drawing Research Network at Loughborough University presenting and chairing the annual conference of drawing events and was awarded the John Phillips and Dennis Holt Travel Prizes (2021).

A Mother’s Love’s Labour’s Lost (2020), Drawing Performance, Prints and Video. The work was performed at Loughborough University in March 2021. It includes a video projection, live performance and prints. The work was based on visualising maternal labour. The video shows a slowed down recording of myself balling children’s school socks. This video is then played on my mobile phone which hangs around my neck and which I draw from using a Kolam drawing technique. Through a practice of performance drawing the work translated a recorded act of balling socks into a repetitive ritualistic process of drawing. Using food ingredients and drawing through a traditional kolam technique, the act of squeezing salt, flour and pigment through the fingers and thumb imbued the invisible and ephemeral act of drawing with a spiritual significance and a cultural permanence associated with rites of passage.