Moyra Davey

Moyra Davey
Born 1958, Toronto, Canada
Known for Photography, Video, Writing

Moyra Davey (born 1958) is a Canadian visual artist. Her work in photography, video and writing often explores familiar objects, encouraging viewers to consider the details of everyday life that are generally overlooked. In this respect, her works have been singled out for their meditative effect and her ability to slow things down, focusing on process and change.[1] She currently lives and works in New York City and is a faculty member at the Bard College International Center of Photography Program.[2]

Early life and education

Moyra Davey was born in 1958 in Toronto, Canada.[3] Davey began taking photographs as a teenager in an improvised darkroom in a closet making, quote: “lots (of) solarized, hippie-looking stuff.” [4] She initially attended art school for drawing and painting but dropped out after a year, later enlisting in the design program and finally photography at Concordia University in Montreal. Moyra Davey received a BFA from Concordia University in 1982 and a MFA from the University of California, San Diego in 1988. In 1989, she moved to New York and attended The Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program.

Artistic Works and Style

Davey is best known for her work in photography and videography, but has also published three novels aside from publishing four photobooks. What drew Davey to writing after the creation of her book Mother Reader (2001). The process of writing Mother Reader reportedly took Davey, “a couple of years” to edit before she felt the book was complete, and after its’ full completion wrote its’ introduction. Davey felt that the completion of Mother Reader is what made reading and writing more important to what she does as a visual artist. Since Davey published Mother Reader, she incorporated her own writing into her visual works. Davey exhibited a video Les Goddesses (2011) at the Whitney Museum of Art where she intertwined literature with photography and videography. Throughout the film, she recites her essay “The Wet and the Dry” in a voice-over. Les Goddesses (2011) is a characteristic work of Davey’s beyond her use of literature within the video, as she uses archival photos of her family throughout the film.[5] ] In The Wet and the Dry, she interlaces incidences of her and her sisters’ youth with the lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and her three daughters. The voiceover is played over several photos of her sisters from the early 1980s. Davey’s intention with Les Goddesses was to inquire into “the validity of storytelling, specifically; telling one’s own story, and the ambivalence surrounding this drive.” Davey’s work in Les Goddesses has been described as a work that “begins as an artful commingling of literary history and autobiography [that] becomes a rigorous exercise in self-scrunity and re-examining […]” The element of re-examining the self, something one knows very intimately, is characteristic of Davey’s means of simulating scrutiny for something that would typically be overlooked.[6] Davey has produced more work about her family life beyond writing of motherhood. Davey’s video Les Goddesses (2011) explores photographs of her sisters in their youth. Davey integrates her own life into her work, as she is seen in her own home throughout her videography piece Les Goddesses (2011) and uses people from her personal life as subject matter often. Davey’s most recent video, My Saints (2014), is composed of interviews with her family as well as with her friends. Due to Davey’s retire in portrait photography in 1985, it is unlikely that there will be more new photos of her family. In a 2014 interview, Davey remarked that she is a step closer to filming her siblings in the flesh. Davey continues to use portrait photography for her work but no longer takes portraits. Davey has described her own work as confessional, however takes a different approach at confessional art than previous artists have taken in the past. She explains in a 2014 interview that she has, “found distance through a certain dispassionate, dissociative stance. I feel simultaneously that its me and not me […].” In taking this approach, Davey’s art has the ability to not only simulate emotion in her audience but also introspection.[7]

Solo Exhibitions

Prizes and Awards

Art market

Moyra Davey is represented by Murray Guy gallery in Chelsea, New York [17] and Greengrassi [18] in London, England.

Public Collections

Publications

Videography

References

  1. ↑ Guggenheim artist bio page
  2. ↑ Bard College International Center of Photography
  3. ↑ "Moyra Davey", The Whitney Museum of American Art, Retrieved 23 November 2014.
  4. ↑ Interview with Jess T. Dugan for Big Red and Shiny online art journal
  5. ↑
  6. ↑
  7. ↑
  8. ↑ Exhibition : Ornament and Reproach, Murray Guy, New York, 2014
  9. ↑ Exhibition : Spleen. Indolence. Torpor. Ill-humor, Murray Guy, New York, 2012
  10. ↑ Exhibition : Les Goddesses, Greengrassi, London, 2011
  11. ↑ Exhibition : Speaker Receiver, Kunsthalle Basel, Basel, Switzerland, 2010
  12. ↑ Exhibition : My Necropolis, Goodwater, Toronto, 2010
  13. ↑ Exhibition : My Necropolis, Murray Guy, New York, 2009
  14. ↑ Exhibition : Long Life Cool White, The Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 2008
  15. ↑ Exhibition : Fifty Minutes, Goodwater, Toronto, 2007
  16. ↑ Exhibition : Monologues (with Julia Scher), Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH, 2006
  17. ↑ Murray Guy Gallery website
  18. ↑ Greengrassi Gallery website
  19. ↑ The Problem of Reading available online at Murray Guy Gallery's website

External links