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IMBI DAVIDSON
born. 1978. Tarndanya | Adelaide, SA lives. Widjabul Wia-bul Country | NSW Imbi Davidson is a visual artist living in the Northern Rivers region, New South Wales. Her work explores the interstices between painting, landscape, plants, textiles, abstraction and mark making. She is currently represented by Gallery Jennings Kerr. Imbi's work is largely inspired by the experience and memory of the Australian landscape, finding expression in its myriad forms, patterns, patinas, contours and colours. Her abstract paintings are intuitive responses to these multiple elements, overlaid with juxtapositions of opaque and translucent layers, interspersed with expressive marks of wild colours. Working with a range of mixed media from found and recycled paint to blood, rock, earth, pigment, paint, water and plants, Imbi often paints on recycled objects, canvases, boards and surfaces. Imbi was awarded an Australian Post Graduate Award to complete her Masters of Visual Arts, researching the art of native plants in Australia, with a focus on Indigenous and abstract representations of plants and the landscape. Her MA Thesis, The Casuarina Tree - Visual Translations of Native Plants and Art in Australia (2013), is catalogued in the National Library of Australia. Imbi was awarded an Australia Council Emerging Artist Mentorship Grant and has been the recipient of numerous awards and grants. Imbi is currently appointed as Gallery Coordinator for the Northern Rivers Community Gallery & Ignite Studios, an arts and cultural precinct in the heart of Ballina. NRCG and Ignite Studios delivers an innovative exhibition program of contemporary art and range of professional creative workshops and community events. Imbi was previously employed as Project Manager at Arts Northern Rivers, working across the creative industries to deliver a range of arts based projects. Key projects included: Rappville Creative Recovery Project, Art on Bundjalung Market, Weavers of the Bundjalung Nation and supporting a range of other projects. As an arts administrator, Imbi has also worked as Creative Producer and professional Artis Facilitator for Northern Rivers Community Gallery and as coordinator for the Links to Learning Program for at-risk youth with Social Futures. As a qualified visual arts specialist teacher, Imbi has organised many exhibitions for youth, worked with Indigenous, Refugee and Migrant communities and facilitated a range of youth arts programs. Imbi has worked as a specialist visual arts teacher in both the NT and NSW and facilitated a range of professional artist workshops and artist camps. Prior to living in the Northern Rivers region, Imbi lived in Arnhem Land and was adopted into the Marragnu Djineng Clan from Wulkabimirri, near Raminginging, Central Arnhem Land. She is a speaker of the Djineng language and worked with senior traditional owners to record ethnobotanical, cultural and ancestral stories and learned traditional basket weaving techniques, dye plants and bush medicines from her 'auntie' Mary Milngurr. Imbi has travelled extensively throughout New Zealand, South-East Asia, India, Canada and Australia.
Imbi's work is inspired by the landscape in its myriad forms; its patterning, patina, history, contour, story and bones. Her paintings are an intuitive or inner response to landscape, giving resonance to its deeper, untold form. Her work explores a mythopoetic landscape of colour, shape and motion; unravelling mountainous stories embedded in the folds, depths and boundaries raging against storming skies. The works range over geometric contours of the landscape in juxtaposition with wild, emotional sky-scapes. Imbi's works capture the tensions between earth and sky, inner and outer, whilst finding linear points of intersection and connection.
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