Urban spaces and architecture are a starting point for my research and work as an artist. I explore these through multiple avenues including archives, historic plans of architects and urban planners, living memory and both my own and others’ experiences and memories of place. My projects evolve organically as connections form between people and places to reveal stories, aspects of cultural and political life in the city, and the relationships people form with their surroundings. I am particularly interested in fragile and undocumented histories of space and how these can subvert and challenge our ideas about the city and its’ residents.
I am becoming increasingly interested in ways of working with a range of voices within installations. I have been thinking about polyphony and the idea of the work coming together as a weaving with distinctive threads. This thinking forms a backdrop to current studio practice as I continue developing the ‘urbansuburban‘ project which was exhibited at Modern Art Oxford in 2017.
Many of my projects, particularly those focusing on 60′s and 70′s architecture, have been collaborations with Susanna Round as barbaresi & round. These include ‘where clouds are made‘, a project developed in response to the decommissioning of Didcot Power Station and ‘Generation Exchange‘, a collaboration with an art group from Age Concern and students from the BA Fine Art Painting course at Wimbledon College of Art.
Community engagement and education play a key role in my practice, taking a range of forms, including reminiscence, inter-generational workshops and creative activities around archives.
Some projects are documented on other websites and blogs including:
www.barbaresiandround.com
https://rachelbarbaresi.wixsite.com/urbansuburban