CONTEMPORARY ART STOCKROOM Jo Davenport

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Jo Davenport’s beautifully gestural paintings speak of an intense relationship with nature and an intimate experience of the artist's local environment. Her rich, painterly depictions represent the passing of time, the transience of the landscape and the ephemeral nature of memory itself. The vitality of the landscape that surrounds Davenport feeds into her paintings to create sophisticated fields of tension and release. Each painting is imbued with an energy that is a unique response – one that is rich and full of life. Ultimately these works reflect a conviction that life is never a passive encounter, but rather a transformative journey toward greater understanding.

ARTIST STATEMENT

When I visited Fowlers Gap in NSW after the rains, I was struck by the fragile abundance of new life – inch-high river gums, tiny plants and wildflowers suddenly sprouting where just an inch of rain had pooled in the red earth. So many of these seedlings will never make it, yet a few small heroes will survive. That mixture of vulnerability, persistence and optimism stayed with me when I returned home to my studio near Albury.

Thinking of William Blake’s poem Spring from Songs of Innocence, in which spring and young children share the same pure, present-tense joy with no thought of past or future. This spirit of innocence, freedom and play has guided the making of these paintings. The first line of this poem ‘Sound the Flute’, I imagine Pan, the Greek god of the untamed natural world, sending gusts of wind to scatter pollen and colour across the canvas. Working mostly in acrylics to keep the colour luminous and the gesture fluid, I try to paint with the same exuberance and openness I saw in Blake’s poetry – allowing the marks to celebrate that first exhilarating rush of spring.

I have used Japanese wallpaper to represent formal structures in society, alluding to highly designed interiors or the motifs in the borders of classical books. These paintings from the exhibition at the Wagga Wagga Regional Art Gallery was entitled ‘From my Window’ The scenes from my windows are now overgrown with the wild and expressive marks of nature - a re-wilding of society and a taking over of nature. These works also reference William Blake’s poem ‘Spring’ which references nature. I took inspiration from the pages of his poetry books, ‘The Innocent of Spring’ which he wrote and illustrated…many of his poems have been illustrated with borders.

'Davenport has arrived at this point through being a constant experimenter. There is never a sense of formula or unthinking repetition about either the physicality of the paint she applies, or the ideas and emotions that she digs out of her psyche. She is, quite simply, brilliant at it.'

Excerpt from catalogue essay 'Giving Back to the Land' by Dr Peter Hill, 2024

'In her latest exhibition Echo of Landscape Davenport is careful to note that she is painting what she wants to see as much as that which she actually encountered at Fowlers Gap, which lies 112km north of Broken Hill.“My work explores the transformative potential of landscape – that feeling of joy and wellbeing you get when you’re standing in nature. And I feel the goodness of the land in terms of colour.” Powered by bold, active brushwork, these rich, vibrating fields of colour occupy a threshold space between the apparent and the implied, between what we perceive and how we interpret it.'
Excerpt from catalogue essay by Tony Magnusson, 2022

'My paintings become an act of reverence for the landscape, a desire to study and observe the natural beauty and profound complexity of nature around me. I look for a point between recognition of the landscape, and the sensed experience of it. The abstraction allows for a layering of meaning that can be experienced in unison, the painting therefore is never static, yet there is an element of spirit too, in a constant striving for something just beyond the visible.'
Jo Davenport, Artist Statement

ARTIST PROFILE:

Jo Davenport’s artistic career has been deeply rooted in painting, a practice central to her life. Her career accelerated in 2011 with the completion of her Master’s degree from the Victorian College of the Arts. In the following years, her work garnered significant attention from curators and collectors, leading to her inclusion in Wangaratta Art Gallery’s major painting survey Action/Abstraction (2013), where she exhibited alongside Sally Gabori, Todd Hunter, Ildiko Kovacs, and Aida Tomescu. Davenport further developed her practice through a residency at Bathurst Regional Art Gallery in Hill End in October 2015 and staged a major solo exhibition at MAMA (Murray Art Museum Albury) in 2016. That same year, her work Sunshine and Rain was acquired by Artbank. She is also an active member of Earth Canvas, a collective of artists working with regenerative farmers in NSW.

Davenport won the Paddington Art Prize (2024) and has been a finalist in several prestigious awards including the Paddington Art Prize (2024, 2023, 2017), the Len Fox Award (2024), the King's School Art Prize (2019), the Langridge Painting Award (2011), the Shelmedine Acquisitive Art Award (2010), the Alliance Francaise Award (2010) and the Pigment Gallery Award (2010). She has also been a finalist in the Chippendale World Art Residency Landscape Prize, Tattersall's Club Prize for Landscape, and the R M McGivern Prize, amongst others. She has staged major public solo exhibitions at WAGGA WAGGA Regional Gallery 2025-26, MAMA (Murray Art Museum Albury), Bathurst Regional Art Gallery and was curated into a group show at the Wangaratta Regional Gallery. Jo Davenport was listed in the TOP 100 Australian Collectable artists of 2025.

Her work is held in the collections of Bathurst Regional Art Gallery, Leeuwin Estate Art Collection, Artbank, Hong Kong's Norman Foster Club House Tai Po, Wangaratta Regional Art Gallery, The University of Melbourne, Mercy Hospital Albury and ArtStream Investment Group, as well as in private collections in Australia, UK, USA, Hong Kong, France, Canada and Japan. A constant traveller, Davenport has undertaken residencies and research trips globally, drawing on the landscapes of Europe, Asia and Australia to inform her practice. Davenport has been successfully exhibiting with Flinders Lane Gallery since 2012.

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Media Highlights

The Innocence of Spring I 2025
oil and acrylic on board
180cm x 120cm
$13,900 AUD

The Innocence of Spring III 2025
oil, acrylic and collage on board
180cm x 120cm
$13,900 AUD

The Innocence of Spring VII 2025
oil and acrylic on board
180cm x 120cm
$13,900 AUD

The Innocence of Spring X 2025
oil, acrylic and collage on board
180cm x 120cm
$13,900 AUD

The Innocence of Spring XII 2025
oil and acrylic on board
90cm x 90cm
$9,500 AUD

The Innocence of Spring XI 2025
oil and acrylic on board
90cm x 90cm
$9,500 AUD

The Innocence of Spring XIII 2025
oil and acrylic on board
90cm x 90cm
$9,500 AUD

The Innocence of Spring XIV 2025
oil and acrylic on board
90cm x 90cm
$9,500 AUD

Spring Landscape 2025
oil on voile
183cm x 168cm
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