Ms Rachel Davies
Contact
- Email: r.davies@kingston.ac.uk
- Location: Kingston School of Art, Knights Park
- Faculty: Kingston School of Art
- School: School of Design
- Department: Department of Graphic Design
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-heirarchical 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
Academic responsibilities
Senior Lecturer / Graphic Design / Moving Image
Qualifications
- MA (RCA) Animation
- BA (Hons) Fine Art