highly strung
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this is a test /
a tightening orbit /
a marine cephalopod /
a breathing routine /
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For They Are Here’s Precarity Centre, Phoebe Davies performed a new text that explores perceptions of anxiety and its manifestations. A discussion hosted by Phoebe and They Are Here following the performance took its starting point from the text and the possibilities of harnessing heightened states to optimize the artistic drive.
Over the last two years Phoebe Davies has been researching anxiety disorders and associated mental health conditions. In summer 2015 she began working with the Whitechapel Gallery to shape a pilot artist residency at the Coburn Centre for Adolescent Mental Health, working alongside occupational therapists, NHS staff and service users.
This new text is co-authored by Phoebe Davies and London-based writer Colin McKean.
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Phoebe Davies’ practice is defined by its location and context, investigating and exploring how people perceive their social framework. She works in response to and in collaboration with individuals and communities. She generates work through instruction, discussion and live interaction, which may be initiated by an individual or group but completed or extended by others. Her outcomes are project dependent; she works across media, including text, installation, performance, audio, video and photography.
Her work is often ephemeral and chanced upon, existing primarily in pedestrian spaces as well as in galleries and institutions, including Tate Britain (London), Whitechapel Gallery (London), Arnolfini (Bristol), Tramway (Glasgow), Fierce Festival (Birmingham), South London Gallery (London), Camden Arts Centre (London), stierischer herbst festival (Graz, AU), Assembly PSU (Portland, USA) and SA-UK British Council Season (Johannesburg, SA).
Phoebe is an Artsadmin artist and is currently a Social Practice Fellow on the British Council’s International Cultural Exchange US Program. Alongside Jenny Moore and Chloe Cooper, she is one third of the Bedfellows, a research collective exploring sex education, sexualised imagery and feminist porn.