Born in 1952, Bairnsdale, Victoria
Jan Davis studied printmaking at Phillip Institute of Technology, Melbourne and graduated with a Post Graduate Diploma in 1981. She completed a Master of Arts at Southern Cross University in 1995.
She mounted the first of four solo shows at Niagara Galleries in Melbourne in 1988 and is now represented by grahame galleries + editions, Brisbane.
Much of her work during the 90’s engaged with the integration of traditional and new print technologies and the integration of text and photographic images. She was particularly interested in the relationship between the illusionistic space contained within the photograph and the space contained within text. She used digital printing processes to explore these themes in works made following travels to the Solomon Islands and China. Her more recent work sees a return to drawing and landscape spaces that featured prominently in her very early work. She continues to integrate certain digital elements in the work and she continues to produce artists’ books.
Her best known work is SOLOMON, a seven volume set of artists books which won the 1995 Fremantle Print Award. (Maybe a little more here?)
Discussion of her current work is included in the forthcoming text by Richard Noyce ‘Critical Mass – Printmaking Beyond the Edge’ which will be published in September 2010. Entries on her work also appear in New Art III, Neville Drury, Craftsman House, 1989, and Directory of Australian Women Artists, Max Germaine 1991. A discussion of SOLOMON appeared in 2007 in Artlink, Vol 27, No 1.
Her work is included in the National Gallery of Australia and the Australian National Library, Canberra as well as many State and regional collections.
She currently holds the position of Adjunct Associate Professor at Southern Cross University following a twenty-year career as an academic. She is now working full time in her studio.