Rachel Garfield

Rachel Garfield is Professor in Fine Art at the Royal College of Art. Her practice is predominantly video that has developed out of painting and reflects on the lived relationships between people, experience and place through a lo fi and collage approach. Her work derives its authority from the chorus of voices it simultaneously assembles - and disassembles. As such, her work is a felt archaeology of place and the body, which lays bare the natural awkwardnesses and contradictions of the marginalised.

 

Solo exhibitions include Be My Ally, EKSO, Pafos (2023); The Struggle: A Trilogy, Lincoln Project Plus, University of Lincoln, USA (2022); The Struggle: A Trilogy, Beaconsfield Gallery Vauxhall, London (2022); The Struggle: A Trilogy, Liverpool Irish Festival (2021); The Struggle: Part I The Straggle, Beaconsfield Gallery Vauxhaull, (exhibition and residency) (2012); Oranim University Gallery, Israel (2010); you’d think so, wouldn’t you?, Arts Council funded solo touring show, Focal Point Gallery, Southend on Sea (2006).

Group exhibitions include (Upcoming) Mirror, Mirror, Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, London, UK (2024); Art Sex Work as part of the screening, Hadn’t I Once a Youth that was Lovely, Heroic, Fabulous, Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin (2023); Be My Ally screened at event Mad About Justice: 10 years of copypress, Swedenborg (2023); Art Sex Work, screened, Designathon, Zurich (2023); Art, Sex, Work, screening as part of Monica Sjoo exhibition, Beaconsfield Gallery Vauxhall (2022); “New Town”, Do They Owe Us a Living?, The Royal Standard, Liverpool (2022);  Small Projects For Coming Communities, Hospitalhof Stuttgart, Zurich (2019);  Le Regard des Femmes, Fonds Regional d’Art Contemporain, Bretagne (2017); 100 for hundred: Centenary exhibition at Christies, Ben Uri Art Gallery (2016);  Salaam Shalom, Colston Hall, Central Bristol (2015); Out of Chaos; Ben Uri: 100 years in London, Somerset House, East Wing (2015);  Tegel: flights of fancy, Group screening The Babylon Cinema, Berlin (2012);  I’m Keeping An Eye On You, Arizona State University Art Museum (2009); I’m Keeping An Eye On You, group show, Centre for Contemporary Art, Santa Fe, USA (2009);  Book, group exhibition of artists’ books (University of Hertfordshire Galleries) (2008); Visions, Wolverhampton Art Gallery (2007); In Their Own Words, End Gallery, University of Sheffield Gallery (2007); Culture Bound, 6^th Bienniale,  Courtauld Institute, London Book (2006).

 

Garfield has been recognised for her work through numerous award nominations. Most recently in 2024, “Be My Ally” was selected as a semi-finalist at the Brooklyn International Short Awards. In the year prior, the same work was a semi-finalist at the New York International Women Festival and Rotterdam Independent and Berlin Independent Film Festival. Garfield was nominated in 2022 for the Jarman Award as well as the Kraszner-Krausz Award for Experimental Film making and Punk: Feminist Audio-Visual Culture of the 1970s and 1980s.