Dr August Jordan Davis BFA (Hons), MA (Distinction), PhD
Senior Lecturer, Programme Leader - MA Contemporary Curation, Director - The Winchester Gallery, Research Fellow of Winchester Centre for Global Futures in Art Design & Media
Dr August Jordan Davis is Senior Lecturer within Winchester School of Art at the University of Southampton, where she is also Director of The Winchester Gallery and Programme Leader of MA Contemporary Curation.
As an art historian and curator, with experience in fine art practice as well, my research explores modern and contemporary art and curation of North America and Western Europe, especially conceptual and post-conceptual practices from 1960 to the present. Directing The Winchester Gallery, my research into the relationship between contemporary curatorial positions and institutional critique underpins my programme of exhibitions and events at WSA.
The curator is a storyteller. Her art is to tell that story with and through and for others.
Before joining WSA in autumn 2011, Dr Davis taught at universities across the UK since 2000, including University of Northumbria, University of Liverpool, University of East London, and University for the Creative Arts (Farnham). Dr Davis helped establish the WSA research centre: Winchester Centre for Global Futures in Art Design & Media, launched in February 2012. Through her work with Global Futures, Dr Davis has been involved in the Glam! The Performance of Style exhibition and conference at Tate Liverpool (2013), the Otherwise Occupied collateral exhibition at the Venice Biennale (2013), as well continuing involvement with exhibitions, conferences, and public programming at the John Hansard Gallery.
Dr Davis presents her research internationally, including convening the session ‘Art and “the war on terror”: 10 years on’ at the College Art Association annual conference, held in New York City, February 2013. She also co-convened the session at the April 2014 Association of Art Historians’ annual conference (held in London at the RCA) entitled: ‘There’s No Place Like Home? Women-in-passage: “Home” and Migrations in Women’s Art since 1945’. Dr Davis writes widely about the work of artist Martha Rosler, examining feminist art and politics, as well as interrogating American foreign policy in relation to anti-war activist art practices.
Since 2012, Dr Davis has been Director of The Winchester Gallery. Working to showcase the talent at WSA, Dr Davis commissions and curates exhibitions with the staff, students, and alumni of the school, together with the larger networks of artists, designers and researchers around the world with whom they work. Conceived as a hub for the research at WSA, The Winchester Gallery’s programme is developed to explore innovative relationships between the role of the curator and that of those with whom she works to communicate various stories and stage different situations, both within and outside of the physical space of the gallery.
Recent curatorial projects Dr Davis has undertaken include The Laboratory of Dissent project with Chapel Arts Studios (Andover, Hampshire) Associate Artists programme. Dr Davis speaks about the practice of contemporary curation internationally, including at the Kochi –Muziris Biennale 2014 in Cochin, Kerala, India, and at Contemporary Istanbul 2015.