Katie Davies

Katie Davies


Katie Davies is a moving image artist and documentary filmmaker based in Bristol. She works with groups and communities creating single and multiple screen installations, using 16mm film and moving image work to explore the construction of collective identities.

Nationalism and violence often form a central critique for her projects, focusing upon identities which are dictated by the state; their agency to self-identify manipulated between political agendas and media discourse. Captured through a sustained relationship of deep listening and dialogue, her collaborators often take control of their own representations of self and identity. Their stories emerge through their own creative process, repositioning past narratives and forging new identities with which to move forward.

Katie approaches critical thinking through filmmaking, images, text-based work, research methods and audience engagement. She is also a member of the artist-run collective BEEF (Bristol Experimental Expanded Film), a film and sound collective supporting experimental practice in Bristol since 2015 and providing an independent platform and much-needed resource for artists’ production, distribution and critical engagement.

Biography


Katie is a Royal West of England Academician and was nominated for the 2016 Paul Hamlyn Award. She was a Jury member for the International competition, Short Film Festival Oberhausen and has exhibited nationally and internationally including FACT Liverpool 2018, Kassel Dokfest, Bratislava International Film Festival and Oberhausen International Film Festival 2017 & 2015, Sarajevo Film Festival 2015, Border Visions, Connecticut, USA 2012 and The Istanbul Biennial 2009.

Her practice-led PhD research focused upon British Sovereignty and it’s contemporary bordering practices and she has contributed to several practice-led publications, writing for both US and British publications.

Projects & Artworks

Leave No One Behind

Single Screen Installation, 2023

Returning to a field of battle, but one that took place over 200 years before they were born, a team of veterans and archaeologists uncover the second skeleton to be found from the Battle of Waterloo. Painstakingly revealing a possible former soldier, they endeavour to piece together his representation, both for solidarity and for remembrance.

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Return Belong Prosper

Single Screen Installation, 2023

Displaced from a culture that they can’t return to and frustrated with the one they are in, three Veterans imagine, paint, and make real, a new world of kindness and compassion for fellow Veterans, and their Greater Manchester community.

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Turn To The Wind

Single Screen Installation, 2023

Feeling cut off and cast out from the communities they called home, two crews of veterans sail the coast of the British Isles and navigate the Thames. They find peace in being at one with nature and a true sense of belonging and purpose again as part of a team.

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Divided by Law

Single Screen Installation, 2021

Divided by Law bears witness to binational families and couples trying to cope with the UK’s hostile immigration environment.

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The Separate System

Single Screen and Two Screen Installation, 2017/18

Produced with two prisons in Liverpool, The Separate System explores the distinct, yet interconnected, spaces of the military, custody and ‘civilian’ life.

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Sleeping in Public

Single Screen Installation, 2017

Sleeping in Public considers what it means to work or, rather, who we are without work.

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The Lawes of the Marches

Three Screen installation, 22 minutes
Single Screen, 16 minutes, 2014

The Lawes of the Marches follows the political/social border and how the landscape between England and Scotland was acted out during the 2014 Referendum vote.

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The Separation Line

Single Screen Installation, 9 minutes, 2012

The Separation Line exposes a British border shared by hundreds of civilians and members of the Armed Forces.

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Commonwealth

Single Screen, 9 minutes, 2009

'In the video, Commonwealth, Davies shifts her focus between three distinct types of ceremonial activity taking place within Sheffield Town Hall: the citizenship ceremonies, the council meetings and...

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38th Parallel

8 minute looping installation, 2008

“Filmed at the Demilitarized Zone on the border between North and South Korea, the work 38th Parallel seeks to portray the particular reality of this contested site. It is a reality marked by an eerie sense of latency.

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Speaker, South Korea

Digital print with soundtrack, 2007

“Remember, once you get to The Demilitarized Zone, there is no more De”, David Palmer, Public Affairs Specialist for the US Forces Korea. On experiencing this Militarized environment, there is...

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Looking for Abraham

Single screen, 3 minutes 52 seconds, 2005

Filmed in Santa Monica, Los Angeles, Looking for Abraham is a four-minute excerpt from a stand up routine captured during happy hour in a European hostel. The comic cultivates a relationship between...

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Contact


Katie Davies