W.A.Davison is a multi-disciplinary artist working in visual art, film and video, performance art, music/sound, writing/poetry, networking, artistic collaboration, and organizing/curating.
Born in Nova Scotia (1962), he studied fine art at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and experimental music at Dalhousie University before moving to Toronto with his partner S.Higgins in 1989.
As a composer, musician, and instrument-builder, Davison has been presented locally and internationally, both as a solo artist and in various groups and collaborations (with members of CCMC, Nihilist Spasm Band, AMM, MSBR, Nurse With Wound, and many others). He has founded numerous music projects including his long-running solo effort Songs of the New Erotics, the improvising ensembles Urban Refuse Group and Six Heads, and his recent noise offerings TH W RBL R and M.Stactor. In 2008, Davison was one of the relatively few Canadian artists to appear in the Whitney Biennial in New York City (in collaboration with S.Higgins and G.Scharpen). Other recent festival appearances include Dictaphonia Fest in Gainesville, Florida, 2009 and Electric Eclectics festival in Meaford, ON, 2010. Davison has organized a number of experimental music events including the Window Performance Series (1995 to 2000) and the Six Heads Noise Picnic in 2005 and 2007. Davison's recorded work spans close to 30 years and has been distributed on small labels, through informal networks around the world. He remains a true experimentalist and a stalwart proponent of independent/DIY music production and dissemination and he has been a prominent member of Toronto's improvising, noise, and experimental music communities since the early 90's.
Davison's visual art has been exhibited internationally and exists in private collections in Canada, Mexico, U.S.A., and Italy. As a visual arts curator he is the originator of a monthly collective drawing event called The Ossington Drawing Party as well as a recent exhibition series entitled The Unveiling. He is co-founder of the North Mutator drawing collective, runs an online graphzine called Moth Moth, and was director of The International Bureau Of Recordist Investigation from 1994 to 2004. As a designer/illustrator his work has appeared in numerous publications including Rampike (Can.), Vaso Comunicante (Mex.), and Walrus Magazine (Can.). He has designed and/or provided art for many CD and cassette packages on various local and international indie music labels and has been a casual and semi-professional web designer since 1999.
Davison has been presenting works of performance art since 1993. Operating largely solo under the name Songs of the New Erotics and occasionally in collaboration with other performance artists (Monty Cantsin, Puppet Govt., BMZ, S.Higgins, Reciprocity Collective, etc.) his performance pieces have been presented in lofts, galleries, streets, parks, abandoned buildings, restaurants, performance art festivals, radio stations, rock clubs and other music venues, dance studios, hotels, shops, community centres, museums, universities, artist-runs, theatres, shopping malls, apartment complexes, basements, backyards, alleys, fields, forests, beaches, Toronto City Hall, and one disused toilet. He has staged performances and interventions in Toronto, Montreal, Halifax, Quebec City, London (Can.), London (UK), New York, and San Francisco. Davison was a member of the curatorial board of the 7a*11d Performance Art Festival from 1999 to 2002.
Since 1986, Davison has also worked in independent film. He has built up a large body of work in 8mm, Super-8, various video and digital formats, and has produced numerous web-based animations. His films, videos, and installations have been shown locally (in Halifax initially, then Toronto) and at various international film events and festivals. Davison has produced a number of independent film events and has curated for Toronto's Pleasure Dome film collective.
As a writer of surrealist poetry, Davison's work has appeared in zines, webzines, small-press publications, and literary magazines. His contribution to the Mercury Press anthology Surreal Estate: 13 Canadian Poets Under The Influence was favorably reviewed in Books In Canada (April 2005). His poetic texts have formed the basis for a number of experimental music and performance art pieces and have been presented in various poetry readings and events including Toronto's Scream In High Park (2007). He is also the author of a chapbook entitled "A Seance In A Bathtub" published by LyricalMyrical Press in 2005. Davison has written non-fiction articles for a variety of music and art magazines as well as his own zines, pamphlets, flyers, newsletters, and blogs.
Davison’s work in various media has been supported by Toronto Arts Council, Ontario Arts Council, and the Canada Council for the Arts and has been featured in publications such as the Globe and Mail, Flash Art, deFile, Artfocus, Eye Weekly, Exclaim, Arthur magazine, The Walrus, numerous independent publications, books ("Surreal Estate" published by Mercury Press, 2004. "Art Action 1958 - 1998" published by Editions Intervention, 2001), as well as many radio and television programs in Canada, U.S.A. and Europe.
In Dec. 2009, Recordism, W.A.Davison's idiosyncratic reworking of Surrealism, celebrated its 25th anniversary.