This week Rachel Gadsden made the Huffington Post as number 7 of the 21 must see artworks in the Cultural Olympiad this summer – how great is that!
I caught up with her yesterday as she was busily applying the final touches to a particular piece for the opening of Unlimited Global Alchemy next week in Cambridge. Rachel’s work seems to tap into something quite different and often feels unusually removed from the artworld.
‘I have a strong connection with MAA and I’m over the moon to have UGA shown here. I’m stangely anthropological at heart and this is what drives my practice – I’ve always been drawn to disparate communities and their stories and particularly those that reflect my personal fragility.’
So the decision to show the work at the Museum of Anthropology and Archaeology (MAA) is more relevant and fitting than one first might think. This anthropological enquiry has seen Rachel working in a range of settings from collieries to derelict asylums; integrating the traces in these spaces into the artwork. Her Unlimited commission however, brings more of Rachel as a person into community with her South African partners, the Bambanani Group, exploring what they share as people living with life threatening long term health conditions.
Unlimited Global Alchemy exhibitions, performances, films and a breathtaking catalogue will launch on the 22nd June at MAA as part of Festival 2012 and we’ll be there to capture it all. The work will remain in Cambridge until the 18th August before transferring to the Bluecoat in Liverpool for DadaFest and finally settling at the South Bank during the Paralympic Games.