Phoebe Davies is a Welsh artist and researcher, presently based at Somerset House Studios in London. Her practice investigates people’s perceptions of their social framing, and she frequently uses collaboration, collective action and Do It Together strategies to make work with individuals, groups and communities.
Through her work Davies often finds herself referencing and exploring collaborative models of working across different social and cultural sectors. Recently, she has investigated ideas taken from areas as disparate as basketball, feminist organisation, science fiction and methods of organic farming.
Recent projects have led her to work with sex educators, secondary school students, elderly residents in care homes, sports teams and DJs as well as art spaces and institutions, including Tate Britain and Tate Modern (London), Whitechapel Gallery (London), Arnolfini (Bristol), Fierce Festival (Birmingham), South London Gallery (London), Wysing Arts Centre (London), Steirischer Herbst (Graz, AUT), Assembly (Portland, USA) and SA-UK SEASONS 2015 (Johannesburg, ZA).
The final forms of Davies’s work are project dependent, and have included live performances, video, audio, print works and constructed social spaces. She currently co-facilitates three research groups: Bedfellows, a radical sex re-education research project; Synaptic Island, a London-based womxn and non-binary DJ collective; and Art is Action, a UK-based social practice research group. In 2015 she was awarded the British Council’s Social Practice Fellowship for the International Cultural Exchange U.S.Program, and she is currently supported by Syllabus III, an UK-wide alternative peer-led learning programme for artists.
Selected extracts from A Navigation by Phoebe Davies and Nandi Bhebhe, 2017. [Please listen with headphones/speakers, as audio is sensitive]
