Ann Davenport - Painter

Ann Davenport is an Art Gallery Guide and a painter.

Details about the exhibition

Inspired by……… an exhibition by 26 volunteers at AGSA 

(Art Gallery of South Australia)

Light Square Gallery, 39 Light Square, Adelaide 

https://www.tafesa.edu.au/adelaide-college-of-the-arts/light-square-gallery

Wed 5th August - Friday 21st August 

Monday to Friday - 10.00 a.m. - 5.00 p.m. 

Official Launch:   

Jason Smith, Director, AGSA 

Thursday 13th August, 3.00 p.m. - 5.00 p.m. 

Music is original music by David Innocente 

"One Thing Led to Another"

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Welcome to Inspired by Art and Volunteering, an exhibition with me, Tanya Ingerson. This podcast is an interview that I did with Anne Davenport, and it was so much fun, is that we talked about, well, we talked about fun, about your art practice being fun. We talked about Zoom, learning and connecting online, Grace Crowley, oil paint, and so much more. So sit back and relax and enjoy the chat I had with Anne. Hi Anne. Thanks for coming. Thanks for coming on the podcast. Um yeah, I'm really excited to have this chat. It's gonna be great. Yeah. Anne, what is your role as a volunteer at the Art Gallery of South Australia?

SPEAKER_01 0:52

Well, I'm a volunteer guide, so I take people on tours, and uh that includes adults as well as children, and I particularly like taking the children on tours.

SPEAKER_00 1:04

Why do you like taking the children? What's the bit about the children?

SPEAKER_01 1:08

Well, um I really enjoy the conversations and they come up with such surprising things, and um I I just love um hearing what they have to say.

SPEAKER_00 1:24

Yeah. They are there's something really amazing, isn't it? That sometimes you get questions like, do you get these where you'll say, Um, you know, tell me what was your favourite beat, or and you'll get the hand up and they'll say, My cat just had kittens. And then you'll get something really profound about the art. How long have you been a guide for?

SPEAKER_01 1:47

Well, I did my training in 2020 um during the COVID period, um, which was real experience, and so I've been guiding since.

SPEAKER_00 1:57

Do you know what? I met you um online. Do you remember? I was I was the lady on the screen running the Zoom training meetings. Oh, yes, and I would introduce you all, and it was a year later that I actually got to meet you all face to face.

SPEAKER_01 2:13

Yes, well, you did a good job.

SPEAKER_00 2:15

It was an amazing time.

SPEAKER_01 2:16

Because, as I told you, I worked in the production house, so we were involved in um online um learning and um doing online delivery, and so I was really interested in us using the Zoom.

SPEAKER_00 2:32

Yeah, it was incredible. What do you love about being a volunteer?

SPEAKER_01 2:37

Well, uh I love volunteering because it's an opportunity to contribute and to give back and to interact with people, and I really enjoy doing that. But what I really love about being a volunteer at the Art Gallery of South Australia is that um I learn so much about art and artists, and um I am surrounded by amazing works, things that um broaden my perspective, and then I get the chance to share that with um other guides, with the public, with children, and it it's very enriching.

SPEAKER_00 3:19

It is, isn't it? We've got a great bunch of people that we all work with as guides and and the public. It's a wonderful space, isn't it, to be at the Art Gallery of South Australia. And you're going to be part of the Inspired By exhibition, which is pretty exciting, coming up pretty quickly in August. What is your art practice, Anne?

SPEAKER_01 3:39

My art practice is painting primarily. Um, and I I paint largely in acrylics, um, although I have gone through watercolour, um, I've done collage, um the the the um acrylics, and and I've had a go at doing oils as well. Wow. What do you like the most? Do you like the oils or is there well, I think oils are fantastic, and I've yet to to really get into it. Um one of the pieces that is in that's in the exhibition was my very first um oil painting, which I did for my sister's birthday of Katajuta, because we'd gone on this holiday.

SPEAKER_00 4:29

Where is that from?

SPEAKER_01 4:30

Katajuta is what was called the August. Oh and um up in Central Australia, and um I the oil the oil medium was fantastic. I just loved it. I it it it sort of all came together in a way that I'd never um been able to achieve with acrylics. So I'm thinking, oh, this is the way to go. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:59

Well, that brings me on to is that the artists that are going to exhibit, so we've all been asked to create something or exhibit something that we're inspired by something. So what is you sort of touched on a little bit, but what are you inspired by for the works you're going to exhibit?

SPEAKER_01 5:15

Okay, so I've been inspired by a number of things, and the things that I chose to put in the exhibition, I attempted to show how I've been inspired by different things, and it had changed over the last six, seven years. Okay, so I I've always been inspired by the environment, the natural environment, and the patterns in the environment. Patterns. There would be a lot, lots of patterns in bark, in rock, and all sorts of things. So I've got two landscapes in there because I originally I used to do largely do landscapes. Um, one of them is that oil that I was telling you, another one is um uh The Grampians reimagined. Oh, and that's a landscape, but I was also inspired once I started coming to the art gallery by what I was learning and seeing. And I loved the Impressionists and how they loosened up what was detailed, realistic painting to add a real creative element in their brush strokes and everything. So Grampians Reimagine was my attempt at loosening up and trying all sorts of different brush strokes that um were more impressionist and inspired by Van Gogh and other things, and using different colours, not just what you see, but what you might imagine. Oh, I can't wait to see them in real life. Um bit later, um I well in 2024 and 25, I did an online course with a woman called Louise Fletcher, who's fantastic, absolutely fantastic. And the first one, I have told friends a bit about this, was that she ran a taster which involved 60,000 people across the whole world. It was so fantastic. And then, you know, after that, she offered five or six um free spaces and I got one. Congratulations! I couldn't believe it. Wow! And so um I was so pleased because I wanted to do the following course that it was the first time I'd actually really put a lot of time into my painting, and I learned so much about colour and form, but most of all, Louise encouraged us to um not judge ourselves and just paint for fun. Have fun, don't worry about what other people think, just do what you enjoy and keep practicing and playing with it. So that's what I've been doing, and um um there was a follow-on called Momentum, um, and uh in that you chose a focus, and my focus I chose was Cubism of all things, because I always thought it was a bit weird. But when when in early 2025 I went to National Gallery exhibition, and Grace Crowley's workbook was there with uh how she had worked out um the shapes to go in Mamand, and in another one that she did uh three figures. Um, and I just was so fascinated by it that I wanted to play with that. Um, you'll see in the exhibition I've got a drawing of Bronsley's bluff, and then I had to go at putting it into Cubism. Ah and then there are a couple of others where I'm playing around with shapes and colours, and um yeah. So now I've been inspired by um uh Grace Crowley, by Impressionism, by Louise Fletcher, who who taught me not to judge what I was doing, and have fun.

SPEAKER_00 9:31

Yeah. I love that. One last question. What do you love about art?

SPEAKER_01 9:41

That's an interesting thing. I think it's I love what I love about it is that it's an opportunity for people to express themselves. Um, and that is might be in a whole range of different ways. And sometimes an artwork can convey things that words just cannot.

SPEAKER_00 10:02

Beautiful. What a wonderful way to finish this podcast. Thank you so much, Anne. And we look forward to seeing you at the Inspired By Exhibition.

unknown 10:10

Good.

SPEAKER_00 10:12

Well, I hope you enjoyed that chat I had with Anne. I can't stop thinking about what she said. Artwork can convey what words can't, and that does sometimes happen. The other thing I don't know for people that have been listening to these podcasts for the Inspired By Exhibition, when I asked that last question, what do you love about art? there's this moment that everybody just stops, and there's this beautiful pause where what you love about art is so personal, and I thank everybody who's come on to this podcast because the answers have been absolutely amazing. So the information about the Inspired By exhibition for Sala this year, 2026, is at the bottom of this podcast. I hope you join me next time when I interview another artist who's a volunteer at the Art Gallery of South Australia. And until then, bye for now.