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I am an interdisciplinary artist working with photography, video, installation, and live art intervention. My work reflects on the human condition through societal and cultural constructs, playing on the tension between reality and fantasy, between the familiar and the surreal or uncanny. I use a set of components that make up the conceptual framework for my work. Early works such as Glamour-puss (2004) and Hope & Glory (2005) emerged from an interest in the intersection of society and the individual, in exploring issues of memory, imagination, morality, and temporality, often with juxtaposing or contradictory themes. I describe it as a visual amalgamation of war and celebrity, death and consumption, and the manner in which these subjects might co-exist and manifest within our conscious. |
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Rachel Wilberforce
Rachel Wilberforce, Untitled # 20, Missing, 2007. Da Vinci Fibre Gloss Archival Giclee, 1 x 1.5 meters, edition of 5. Courtesy of the artist.I am an interdisciplinary artist working with photography, video, installation, and live art intervention. My work reflects on the human condition through societal and cultural constructs, playing on the tension between reality and fantasy, between the familiar and the surreal or uncanny.
I use a set of components that make up the conceptual framework for my work. Early works such as Glamour-puss (2004) and Hope & Glory (2005) emerged from an interest in the intersection of society and the individual, in exploring issues of memory, imagination, morality, and temporality, often with juxtaposing or contradictory themes. I describe it as a visual amalgamation of war and celebrity, death and consumption, and the manner in which these subjects might co-exist and manifest within our conscious. In Phenomena (2004) and Mirage (2007) the landscape of Utah and Nevada is a metaphor for man’s disposable nature and a portent of things to come, whilst hyperreal-colored gorilla portraits extend these concerns in Devolution de l’Homme (2006).
In more recent work, I have moved to the exterior and deal indirectly with the individual and more direct with society through references to subtle political, religious and moral dilemmas. In Missing (2007) my large-scale grainy and painterly photographic images (shot on 35mm film and often in low-level or contrasting lighting conditions) focus on anonymous and clandestine places within urban infrastructures: interiors and exteriors of working, derelict or re-purposed massage parlors, brothels, and saunas. They are devoid of people and focus on the imprint of human activity through the “in-between” and “limbo” spaces outside of and in close proximity to the action. Through the phenomenon of sex trafficking and prostitution, the viewer is confronted with issues of voyeurism, ownership, domain, and institutionalization. The images derive a tension from a disquieting blend of beauty and context, the real and the fantastical.
Current works-in-progress include The Vanishing Point, which examines the nature of internal theatrical and cinematic spaces as existing beyond our immediate perception in particular when not used for primary purposes (such as between performance or when left empty) and in reference to McTaggart’s The Unreality of Time, and, My Parallel Archive exploring the in-connectivity and interrelated themes inherent within family archives, and how particular constructs and narratives might translate and be reproduced as a collective memory.
Upcoming exhibitions include No Man’s Land exploring physical territory, domain, and interactivity, and our relationship with the “other,” and Spectacle featuring artists’ personal perspectives of human life as a visible commodity, and how life experiences are shaped by social forces within the context of William Hogarth’s work and in relation to Guy Debord’s Society of the Spectacle.
