Artist & Spatial Designer
My practice explores how space is inhabited, perceived and shaped through relationships among body, material, atmosphere and place. Grounded in spatial practice, I attend to how we encounter and understand place through embodied experience, sensory perception and the material conditions of our surroundings.
Working between Sicily and Naarm/Melbourne, my research unfolds through walking, drawing, observation and sustained sensory engagement with place. Through experimental photography, video, drawing, painting, installation and spatial intervention, I develop site-responsive works that expand how space can be perceived, understood and experienced.
Emma@emmajdavis.com
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@Emmajdavis_
- Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT)
- Melbourne, Australia
- Bachelor of Interior Design (Honours)
- Expected 2028
- Monash University
- Melbourne, Australia
- Bachelor of Fine Art, Painting (First Class Honours)
- 2007
- Selected Works
- Casa Giglio
- Cammarata (AG), Italy
- 2026-2027
-
Casa Giglio Monograph
-
Digital research journal
- 2026-ongoing
- Cammarata Historic Centre Regeneration
- Cammarata (AG), Italy
- 2026-ongoing
- Led by Streetto
- Life in Ruins?
Cammarata (AG), Italy - Upcoming
- A Long Walk
- An eight-month, ~15,000-metre walk from Cammarata to Santiago
- Upcoming
-
Inventory of the In-between
-
Digital interior journey and research journal
-
https://456117.cargo.site/
-
2025
-
The Field Archive
-
Draw Lab, RMIT University
-
Melbourne, Australia
- 2025
- Sensory Experiments
- NGV Melbourne Design Week
- Mission to Seafarers Victoria and Norla Dome
- Melbourne, Australia
- 2019
- Event guide
- Workbook/19.10.2007
- Digital artwork, online generative drawing
- 2007
- Take,
- Digital artwork, archived in Rhizome ArtBase, Rhizome
- 2007
- Nine Beginnings
- Digital artwork at http://www.ninebeginnings.org
- 2007
- Previous Owner: Unknown
- Blindside
- Melbourne, Australia
- November 8-24, 2007
- The online archive was published at www.previousowner.blogspot.com
- He wrote re:beautiful / Letters from a Really Tacky Dating Website
- Victoria Park Gallery
- Melbourne, Australia
- 2007
- Hanoi Boys
- Runt Space, Monash University
- Melbourne, Australia
- 2007
Group Exhibitions
- Self
- Driven By, curated by StreetTo
- Via Roma, Cammarata, Sicily
- December 23-28, January 5, 2022
- Take,
- Debut IV, cur. Dr Marion Piper
- Blindside
- Melbourne, Australia
- 31 January-16 February, 2008
- Accompanied by a series of keywords printed on takeaway-style paper sheets.
- Take,
- Atrium Gallery, Monash University
- Melbourne, Australia
- October 25-28, 2007
- Accompanied by a series of keywords printed on ‘take-home’ paper sheets.
- I’m Not Looking Forward to the Future Very Much
- Runt Space, Monash University
- Melbourne, Australia
- 2007
- Found Digital Photographs
- Centre for Contemporary Photography
- Fitzroy, Melbourne
- 25 May-7 July, 2007
- Artist Books and Writings
Portals
- A speculative interior
- Edition 1/1
- 2025
- Here---There
- A meditation on spatial awareness
- Edition 1/1
- 2025
- He wrote re: beautiful Letters from a Really Tacky Dating Website
Online digital file download
Via http://www.victoriaparkgallery.com - 2007
- Publications
PAD Journal, no. 30, vol. 19
- ‘Multisensory Ecological Attunement: Engaging with the More-than-Human Through Design and Pedagogy.’
- Written and edited by Hannah Moriarty, Lucia Ratti and Alastair Reed
- June 2026
- To the Left and Back Some
- Blindside
- Published by Blindside
- 2014
- Ode to Istanbul
- Open Field Magazine Issue One
- Edited and published by Kirsten Alexander
- March 2011
- Night Interior [Working Title]
- Night as Commons and the Dark Side of Light
- Hypha_etc, Vármező / Câmpu Cetății, Romania
- October 1-November 11, 2026
- Funded by the European Union. Implemented by the Goethe-Institut.
Current/Proposed Research
- Darkness as Spatial Research: Night, Embodiment and Ecological Relations
- 2026–ongoing
- Thresholds: Houses, memory and possible futures
- https://thresholds.emmajdavis.com
- Cammarata (AG), Italy
- 2026-ongoing
-
Office for Spatial Research (O.S.R)
-
A room for spatial research, publishing, writing, art, design and making within the historic centre
-
Cammarata (AG), Sicily, Italy
-
2027-ongoing
- Amphitheatre as Public Interior: Site-Responsive Spatial Research
- Australia and Italy/France
- Proposed
Awards and Grants
- Joseph Beuys Award for Excellence
- Faculty of Drawing, Monash University
- 2007
- Interdisciplinary Faculty Award
- Monash University
- 2007
Email: Emma@emmajdavis.com
@emmajdavis_
Sicily, Italy
Victoria, Australia 3205