Savannah Jarvis’ new body of work explores hypervigilance, chronic pain, and the ways prolonged attention to the body can reshape perception. Using the domestic as a recurring metaphor, familiar interiors become stand-ins for the body: spaces that are observed, maintained, and gradually altered through constant vigilance. As the body watches itself too closely, ordinary signals become amplified and perception begins to distort.
Rather than illustrating pain directly, Jarvis creates quiet psychological landscapes that give form to experiences often beyond language. Domestic objects and architectural elements become vessels for vulnerability, uncertainty, and endurance, inviting viewers to consider how pain is not only felt, but continually interpreted and rewritten through the act of paying attention.
Winner of the 15 Artists Prize. Acquired by City of Moreton Bay Galleries.
My practice explores how the sensations of the body can be understood in painting via the use of metaphoric expression.'
Savannah Jarvis is an Meanjin/Brisbane artist whose multidisciplinary practice investigates pain and the historical difficulties in it’s communication. Exploring how we may begin to understand and articulate the complex relationship between pain, the medical body and language, her work is underpinned by the notion that pain is inexpressible in language alone. Jarvis believes that pain has an articulation, and that images instead may succeed the realms in which language has failed. In 2020, Savannah completed a BFA with Honours at the Queensland College of Art.
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