
‘Inventory of Loss’, exhibited at Fusion Arts Oxford, Window Exhibition, Hythe Bridge Street as part of ‘Notes on a Transient Archive’, December 2024 to February 2025
Rachel Barbaresi makes work in response to place and space, embracing the unexpected, the overlooked and being lost. Migration, loss of space, memory and connections between place, identity and belonging are key themes. Her research processes are multilayered, involving visual and audio documentation, searching in archives, listening to oral histories and responding to informal collections of objects and images. There is a sense of fragmentary time and space in the research which connects with the forms she works with in her creative practice. Her installations can incorporate bookworks, sculpture, painting, wall vinyls, archival material, workshop outcomes and contributions from members of the public. The spatial qualities of painting play a part within the installations, with formal aspects of the work suggesting connections between seemingly disparate elements. She values thinking through material processes such as painting, stitch, collage and assemblage, often fabricating with re-purposed or found materials and assimilating the associations they bring into the work.
Her projects have been developed both independently and in collaboration with others including Susanna Round (as barbaresi & round), Junie James (of ACKHI – African Caribbean Kultural Heritage Initiative), Euton Daley (of Unlock the Chains Collective) and Dolcie Obhiozele (Oxford Community Education Group).
Organisations she has worked with include TORCH (University of Oxford), Modern Art Oxford, Modus Operandi, Arts at the Old Fire Station, OVADA, Cornerstone Gallery, Oxfordshire Health NHS Trust, The Wimbledon Space and Fusion Arts.
Further details
As an undergraduate student Rachel studied at the Slade School of Fine Art, UCL, and then at Chelsea School of Arts, UAL for her post-graduate diploma in Fine Art. She completed a Certificate for Learning and Teaching in Higher Education at UAL and is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. She is a Senior Lecturer on Art & Design foundation at Oxford Brookes and is currently working towards a PhD by published work.
Some projects are documented on other websites and blogs including:
www.barbaresiandround.com
https://rachelbarbaresi.wixsite.com/urbansuburban