Interview with SHETLAND ARTIST JOYCE DAVIES IN ABERDEEN

I interviewed Shetland artist Joyce Davies at The Print Room (part of Peacock & the worm) in Aberdeen that was live in-person and through YouTube on Wednesday 22 November 2023. This was to coincide with her short monoprints exhibition ‘Da Broken Parts’ following her 1-week residency at Peacock to create a new body of work – 40 individual prints were created. The residency was funded by Luminate.

Please note this videos speaks about mental health, anorexia, grief and other topics which some viewers may find distressing or triggering.

Further information on the residency and exhibition: This was Joyce’s second residency at peacock, following her first one in 2021. She describes this most recent residency as a ‘highly cathartic experience,’ where she had the support of skilled printmaking and was able to concentrate fully on painting with her much-loved acrylic paints and exploring her own continuously developing way of working. Not having followed an art school training, not knowing what the rules are, she feels gives her carte blanche to break them all. The works in the exhibition are focussed on the physical body, considering issues of health and wellbeing. The process of making was for Joyce a way to untangle complex memories and difficult emotions. She was hugely surprised by the images that were produced. ‘I was aware of feeling more and more brave as the week went on,’ she remarks. ‘These works are the most raw and authentic work that I have made to date.’

Throughout the residency, she was supported by printer James Vass. In the resulting works, Joyce feels she has expressed an honest visual story of many difficult parts of her life, including childhood memories. She agrees with many psychologists that the human body tells a story; the prints she has realised during the residency relate her story in a way that she had not been able to convey yet. While they refer to her own story, Joyce wishes for visitors to look at the images and explore just what they mean to them, and to linger there only for as long as they want or need too. ‘Some of them may be very hard to look at,’ she admits, but she does hold the view that ‘art is not always meant to be pretty but is simply a way for people to express our inner world, no matter what age we are, and for the artist to experience emotional release and personal growth from having made them.’

Watch the full interview below - there is a transcript to follow on YouTube as well, if needed. It is one hour long.