Ms Rachel Davies
Faculties, deparments and locations
- Kingston School of Art
- Department of Graphic Design
- School of Design
Senior Lecturer / Graphic Design / Moving Image
- Email:
- r.davies@kingston.ac.uk
About
I am an international award-winning filmmaker with 30 years of practice research experience, specialising in interdisciplinary creative collaboration and embodied film practice.
My work spans creative documentary, immersive interactive environments, artist's film, touring theatre / dance collaborations for stage and screen, projection-mapping and TV promo. I have been commissioned by Channel 4, BBC Open University, Arts Council England, Wellcome Trust, Sadlers' Wells, and British Council among others.
My work is in international collections and has been screened and broadcast in festivals and on TV around the world, and has been recognised for Research Excellence (contributions to REF 2008, 2014 and 2021).
Learning and insights from this work is captured to enhance knowledge and inform future research.
With a background in Fine Art (Nottingham Trent University), MTV Asia, and the Royal College of Art (Animation), I was the inaugural filmmaker Associate Artist at The Place, London, during which time I collaborated with numerous choreographers, for example on a short film We Got Old shot on 16mm in Hong Kong. I received a major art prize the IMZ Dance Screen Award for my short film Gold about teenage gymnasts in a South London suburb. As John Thaw Fellow in Drama at Manchester University I was commissioned by the inaugural Manchester International Festival for The Assembly a single-screen film installation at Cornerhouse Gallery, about my memory of singing in the Manchester Girls' Choir.
In my creative practice and research, often derived from lived experience, I employ both seductive and distancing devices and a collision of media to both engage and gently challenge audiences within personal and human stories. I hone the communicative potentials of filmic hybridity within screen and/or live settings, embracing new languages and technologies. Dissemination of knowledge and learning is within an intentionally broad context; from art gallery, cinema and theatre, to hospitals and primetime television broadcast; their impact is to raise awareness of societal issues and to challenge discourses of exclusion and stigma.
In 2016 I formed R&D Studio www.rachelanddaniel.co, a production company with artist Daniel Saul, to create projects that are human-centred, collaborative, creatively and technically innovative; engaging a wide audience in response to a range of social, cultural and aesthetic situations. This non-hierarchical project has so far achieved remarkable outcomes such as Winter. a creative documentary portrait of Mandy who has terminal cancer, made for a huge monumental screen (part of an epic 7 hour durational piece of theatre about time and the human life cycle, with Quarantine Theatre for Manchester Aviva Studios.) More recently for A Small Dream: Dorset we created an international project with an Indian dancer; three site-specific pieces over three weekends; live art, projection-mapping and a performance projection spectacular.
Areas of specialism
- Human-centred moving image for wellbeing
- Interdisciplinary creative practice
- Embodied documentary practice
- Collaborative performance film
- Dance film
- Animation
- Site-specific screen-based art
- Experimental film
- Projection-mapping
- Projection in stage performance
- Women filmmakers
- Community film
- Creativity in community engagement
Qualifications
- MA (RCA) Animation
- BA (Hons) Fine Art
Domains
Moving image is an essential tool in a graphic designer's portfolio, with the boundaries between genres and disciplines constantly changing.Designers need to be equipped with knowledge and skills of context, style and audience to be able to fully exploit the devices of the medium in a self-aware, nuanced and original way.To find new ways of telling old stories to audiences numbed by information overload, we take cues from artists' film and the avant-garde and apply them to contemporary and future-facing situations.
Courses taught
My current research activities focus on experimental and documentary film practice, collaborative performance-film, and community engagement.
I am currently researching into two areas that explore significant societal issues:
1) Moving-image based co-created health interventions for person-centred healing and chronic pain self-management
2) Co-production of inclusive future narratives on India's moon missions within the context of a collaborative interactive book
My previous scholarly works have included narratives on the works of experimental animator Jayne Aaron and autonomous filmmakers Margaret Tait and Jon Jost.
Publications
A reciprocity of care : a dialogical reflection on the artwork Winter.
Hammersley, John Mark, Davies, Rachel and Saul, Daniel, 2018, Scottish Journal of Performance (5), 1, pp 103-117
Chandini (A Bride for the Moon)
Davies, Rachel and Saul, Daniel (2020). In: Earnshaw, Rae, (eds.), Liggett, Susan, (eds.), Excell, Peter, (eds.) and Thalmann, Daniel, (eds.), Technology, design and the arts : opportunities and challenges. Cham, Switzerland: Springer, pp 251-270
Winter. A reflection
Davies, Rachel (2019). In: Banham, Simon, (eds.), Hunter, Sarah, (eds.), Brady, Michael, (eds.) and O'Shea, Renny, (eds.), Summer. Autumn. Winter. Spring. Staging life and death. Manchester University Press
Collaborative community filmmaking
Davies, Rachel, Zimmerman, Andrea Luka, Zaman, Rehana and Deswarte, Dieter(2019). In: Open City Documentary Festival, 04-10 Sept 2019 :London, U.K.
Rachel Davies, fact and fiction: filmaker in progress
Davies, Rachel(2014). In: Museums at night, 15 May 2014 :London, U.K.
The art of intervention: Kingston University responses: Japanese mob
Barber, Stephen, Davies, Rachel, Horrocks, Chris, Mancke, Carol and Maude-Roxby, Alice(2009). In: The art of intervention: critical perspectives on the intersections of private and public memory, 14 Feb 2009 :Kingston upon Thames, U.K.
Journey
Davies, Rachel and Saul, Daniel (2019).
A time and a place
Davies, Rachel (2004).
Arrival
Davies, Rachel and Saul, Daniel (2019).
Birth
Davies, Rachel and Saul, Daniel (2019).
Chandini - Work in Progress
Davies, Rachel and Saul, Daniel (2019).
They tuck you up your Mum and Dad
Davies, Rachel (2013).
The light garden
Davies, Rachel (2010).