Davida Allen

Davida Allen is painter and filmmaker from Queensland, Australia. In 2018 Griffith University Art Museum presented the significant survey exhibition, Davida Allen: In the Moment, which included over 40 works from the artist’s then five-decade practice. Other significant institutional exhibitions include: National Self Portrait Prize: Look at me looking at you, University of Queensland Art Museum, Brisbane (2017); GOMA Q, QAGOMA, Brisbane (2015); Davida Allen: Survey Exhibition, Museum of Contemporary Art, Brisbane (1988); Painters and Sculptors, QAGOMA, Brisbane and Museum of Contemporary Art, Saitama (1987); Davida Allen, National Gallery of New Zealand, Wellington (1986) and touring throughout New Zealand; An International Survey of Recent Painting and Sculpture, Museum of Modern Art, New York (1985); Transformation: Australian Perspecta, Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney (1985). Allen was awarded the Tattersall’s Landscape Art Prize in 2010 and won the Archibald Prize in 1986.

She has written and illustrated two books, The Autobiography of Vicki Myers: Close to the Bone and What is a Portrait? and she wrote and directed the loosely autobiographical feature film Feeling Sexy (1999). Her work is held by the National Gallery of Australia, and the state galleries of South Australia, Western Australia, Queensland and Victoria.

Her work is represented in all major Australian public collections, as well as The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and the Museum of New Zealand/Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington.