JO DAVIDSON                       CV   2025                      www.jodavidson.net          @jodavidsonom

Jo Davidson has been practicing art since well before first exhibiting at Ray Hughes Gallery Brisbane          in the late 70s.
She was tutored by renowned SA artist Ruth Tuck throughout her teenage years and studied at SA School of Art in the 70s.  With her artist partner Stephen Killick, she travelled throughout Europe for three years in the 80s, visiting biennales, art events and collections, state and private galleries, museums and cathedrals, and carrying out residencies in London, Amsterdam, Southern France and Venice Italy.                                     They have lived in Birdwood Mid North Coast NSW since 1986, and established Outer Magnolia artist in residence there in 2023.   Their son Jasper (sculptor & stage designer @toggles) and daughter Nixi (fashion designer @nixikillick), with their artist partners, work in Victoria. 

Jo makes paintings, drawings, prints, sculpture, installations, soundscapes and writes poetry.                                             
Her visual art is represented in state and private collections around Australia and overseas.                       
She has held 18 solo shows & been in more than 30 group exhibitions.
 Recently  Jo was commissioned to create a sound and viewing Pod for humans visiting GuulaBaa, the new Hastings Koala Breeding Centre.                                                                                                                              She works regularly as a teacher in various media, for the WRAP Project with local disabled artists.
 She curated and exhibited in several local exhibitions,and completed 2 community murals in the last few years.   She exhibited her hand casts and voice story recordings of residents in WeeWaa Aged Care, alongside their large format portraits by photographer Kerry Wilson, at WeeWaa Regional Gallery in 2022.  
 In Adelaide 2021 she exhibited with Stephen Killick, paintings and works on paper from the time of extreme fires around their NSW home, and artist friend Samone Turnbull's ceramics, at West Gallery Therbarton, despite Jo's serious leg injury from a motor vehicle accident in late 2020. 

Jo and Stephen have shared residencies in Gloucester Regional Gallery, Noosa Regional Gallery, Hobart Art School, London Air & Space Gallery UK, Island of Poveglia Venice Lagoon Italy & Dalby Regional Gallery Qld. 

From 2004-19 Jo worked for CACD organisation Beyond Empathy, as lead artist and project manager of BE's  Maternal Health Strategy Mubali, creating plaster belly casts of young Indigenous Mums-to-be, and training local indigenous artists and health workers in the art of belly casting.  Jo translated this work as Sea of Bellies, into communities in Derby WA; Kamilaroi Moree; Bundjalung Lismore; Ainawan Armidale; Gumbayngirr Bowraville, Coffs Harbour, Nambucca; Biripi Taree, Woromi Forster; and in Redfern, Rozelle, and the Illawarra in NSW as well as Logan Woodridge, Capalaba, Strathpine and Salisbury in SEQ.       During  NAIDOC 2018 ‘Because of Her We Can’, Jo curated and staged exhibitions of Indigenous painted belly casts for Beyond Empathy in Brisbane, Lismore, Barangaroo Sydney, Melbourne, and Moree Regional Gallery BAM.     www.seaofbellies.org.au         
 Jo has run many community workshops at regional galleries and local community festivals.
In 2014, with assistance from local artists, she designed and built a 6m high Brolga puppet animated by 8 men for Kamilaroi Moree Beyond Empathy Brolga Festival -performed outdoors in Moree, then staged at Sydney Theatre Company and again in 2016 along with her interactive stage set, at Moree Town Hall.
In 2012 Jo was commissioned by Beyond Empathy to make an Installation at NERAM Gallery in Armidale NSW articulating BE’s work across communities.
​ In 2003, Jo worked alongside Port Macquarie Hastings Council Cultural planner, as Project Manager on Confluence, the first sculpture forum, prize and festival on PM Town Green. She worked on the steering committee for subsequent sculpture festivals -known as Aquasculpture, and as a participating sculptor in the prize, submitting personal, ephemeral and collaborative works with Indigenous TAFE artists, as well as running community sculpture workshops alongside guest artists to create large scale community works installed on PM Town Green  for the festival.
 Jo was an adviser on PMHC’s Arts and Cultural Development Advisory Committee for 10 years.

In 2015 Jo worked for Accessable Arts with local artists with disabilities, building a giant Whale Tail exhibited through summer at the Glasshouse Regional Gallery in Port Macquarie.
Jo has completed numerous public mural projects in the Hastings region, some with community participation;  Hastings Coop; Wauchope Postcards with WRAP group;  Wauchope Map with Stephen Killick 2015; Wauchope Arts Council Tree Mandala 2014;  Kids Cancer Unit in then new PM Base hospital 2005; Long Flat Store; Werrikimbe Mural Bain Park Wauchope 1999; Wauchope PO Jesters Mural ‘97 (now housed in Wauchope Arts Hall since 2012); Wauchope Town Green Indigenous TAFE Mural ’98; Long Flat School 95.

She worked part time for 12 years as a TAFE art teacher on Fine Arts and Indigenous Arts courses in Wauchope, Port Macquarie, Kempsey and Great Lakes, and a local primary school for 10 years. 

Throughout the 90s, Jo worked with local Slippry Sirkus and Bad Dags Theatre Companies at Bellingen Global Carnival, Wauchope Bago Festivals and other MNC festivals, building large scale puppets and lanterns, and performing soundtracks for several outdoor Climate Change Awareness community  theatre extravaganzas. 

In 2020 Jo was commissioned by PMHC to create a community playground sculpture at Rocks Ferry in Wauchope, incorporating a mural featuring drawings by local Biripi children. Sadly the installation work
​was interrupted by extreme flood events and Jo's recovery from her leg being smashed in a MVA.