Jo Davenport: Beyond Landscape

Jo Davenport’s lyrical oil paintings inhabit the liminal resting place between real, imagined and remembered landscapes. For the artist, the notion of space is not defined by perspectival strictures and physical form, but conceived as a scintillating constellation of memories and emotions. Davenport’s new paintings are portraits as much as they are landscapes. Moving beyond topographical and physical representations, the works map the emotional physiognomy of place, poetically positing landscapes as personal vaults of identity.

Through visceral layers of oil, intuitive mark making and refined erasure, Davenport summons the sense or ‘spirit’ of landscapes from her personal history – specifically the Murray River region – capturing the elusive strands of memory that colonise these landscapes. Her mnemonic and tectonic approach spawns an abstraction that evokes fragmented residues of places from the past. For Davenport, returning to certain landscapes conjures revenant specters of their former life. Sheer swathes of ghostly oil screening distant forms evoke these presences from the past, while ‘grids’ of paint drips are like the webs or membranes of memory that filters perception. Each painting conjures a specific time of day and season, fossilising these moments forever whilst also revealing the brevity of time, of life.

Working intuitively and organically, Davenport taps into the healing power of the landscape. ‘You can gain a lot of strength from being in the landscape’ she says, reflecting on the symbiosis between our tendency to gain strength and wisdom from hardships and nature’s capacity for renewal and regeneration. In the paintings, roaring strokes of pinks, blues and yellows pulsating with energy sing alongside a delicate chorus of drips and dots, a painterly orchestra that celebrates the generous life-force of the land. This sense of rebirth filters in to the uniquely feminine experience of landscapes that Davenport’s works perpetuate. Instead of dwelling on grand Romantic narratives surrounding the sublimity of nature (historically inhabiting male representations), the paintings form gentler contemplations of the fragility and intimacy of the landscape. We are presented with sensual perceptions of place filtered through a decidedly feminine lens tempered with maternal modalities of creation and nurture.

Jo Davenport has completed extensive studies including an MFA (2011) and a Postgraduate Diploma of Visual Art (2011) at the Victorian College of the Arts, and an Advanced Diploma in Fine Arts, Riverina Institute (2007). In 2016, she was the Artist in Residence at Hill End, and in 2015 she was the Artist in Residence at The Bathurst Regional Art Gallery Davenport has also been the recipient of several awards including the Langridge Painting Award (2011), the Shelmedine Acquisitive Art Award (2010), the Alliance Francaise Award (2010) and the Pigment Gallery Award (2010) at the Victorian College of the Arts. The artist has been featured in notable publications such as Australian Art Collector, and her work is held in important collections including Artbank, Sydney; the University of Melbourne; Norman Foster Club House Tai Po, Hong Kong; Wangaratta Regional Art Gallery and ArtStream Investment Group, as well as private collections in Australia, UK, France, Canada and Japan.