Goldsmiths - University of London

Dr Rachel Garfield

Rachel Garfield is an artist whose work often deals with disjunctions of narrative to explore the idea of the incoherent subject and the formation of subjectivity. Although primarily her work would be regarded as video-based fine art shown in gallery contexts, the work has an ongoing relationship with the traditions and concerns of avant garde documentary film.

In addition to her art practice, Rachel Garfield’s published writing typically explores the positioning of artists, processes of exclusion, heirarchies of victimhood, documentary practices and the politics of the subject, performativity, the encounter and the look; indeterminacy in the visual field often through the example of Diasporic communites; Landscape painting and the formation of Englishness in the 20th Century. Garfield has also run seminars and published on Research Methodology in practice led PhD in Fine Art.

Academic qualifications

1999-2004 PhD, (Fine Art), Royal College Art, (examined by Prof P Gilroy and Prof. J Jefferies)
1996-1998 MA, Central St Martins
1982-1985 BA (Hons.), Fine Art Upper Second, NELP

Presentations and exhibitions

Selected recent exhibitions

2010
Transmission Annual (eds) Michael Corris, Sharon Kivland, Jasper Joseph-Lester, The Strangers art pages, Artwords Press, 2010, pp 162-173, 97819064410 

Oranim  University Gallery - Solo exhibition, Haifa Israel, May 24^th- June 26^th 2010 

2009
Arizona State University Museum (group touring exhibition), I’m Keeping An Eye On You, (Sept 19 – Dec 16 2009) 

Centre for Contemporary Art, Santa Fe, (group touring exhibition) (Dec 16^th 2009-January 31, 2010), 2009, I’m Keeping An Eye On You

2008
I’M KEEPING AN EYE ON YOU, Aqua art, December 3 – 7, 2008
Miami, Florida, group show http://asuartmuseum.asu.edu/imkeepinganeyeonyou

JUST WORLD ORDER, Artsway, Hampshire, group exhibition, 12th July – 7 Sept

Wisconsin Jewish film festival 2008. Screening of ‘You’re Joking’

Book, group exhibition of artists’ books (University of Hertfordshire
Galleries, October 2008) tour

2007
Wolverhampton Art Gallery, “Visions” programme

Artsway, Multichannel 4 person group exhibition

10th International Film and Video Festival, Detroit Museum of New Art,
screening, 9 – 31st March

2006
CULTURE BOUND, 6th bienniale at the Courtauld Institute, London

2005
“YOU'D THINK SO WOULDN'T YOU?”, Arts Council funded solo touring show, Focal Point Gallery, Southend on Sea, March 06: Margaret Harvey Gallery, November 2005; Artsdepot, (September 2005)

2004
Sparkvideo, Spark Contemporary Art Space, screening, Syracuse NY (2004)
Problematising Race, screening at the Whitechapel Art Gallery,
curated by Inge Blackman (2004)

2003
faprojects, video invitational, London (selected by JJ Charlesworth), (2003)

Selected recent conferences

University of Texas, Austin, “The People of The Book” one day symposium, invited speaker, Dept of History of Art, Feb 26 2011.

The Whitechapel Art Gallery “When the Sixties Didn’t Swing” invited panel member (with Niru Ratnam and Amna Malik), 30 September 2010 

The Whitworth Art Gallery: The Complete Roberta invited keynote speaker to the event about artist Lynn Hershman Leeson (with Lynn Hershman Leeson and Jackie Stacey, University of Manchester )15^th May 2010

Austrian Cultural Forum: Invited speaker to the symposium, Culture and Location: Fantasies of Belonging in Contemporary Art, March 17^th 2010

Transmission Annual, conference and launch, June 2010 Sheffield Hallam University

“Imagined Futures of Artists Film and Video” invited speaker at Camden Art Centre, 10th February 2008 organised and invited by the Fine Art department at Middlesex University

"Documentary Now!", Birkbeck College, 10/11 October ’08,

"The Afterlives of Postoclonialism", convened two panels with artists and
art historians in collaboration with Dr Bernadette Buckley from the Politics
dept at Goldsmiths, 25/26th October 2008

Professional activities

Professional

Peer Reviewer for DAAD Research Grant and Study Scholarship
Advisory presentation to Contemporary Arts Society on video art

External Examiner, PhD Fine Art, University of London, Goldsmiths,2007

External Examiner Byam Shaw MA (2008-20011)

External Examiner BA Digital Media Arts, University of the Creative Arts at
Farnham, 2008-2011

Teaching experience

Goldsmiths, MFA  & PhD supervision, intermal PhD examining (0.2 fte, current employment),Salford University, Lecturer, Visual Arts (0.5 fte), Central St Martins, BA 2D pathway, Goldsmiths,Visual Cultures BA, Kent Institute Of Art & Design, BA Visual Theory, Camberwell College of Art & Crafts, University of the Arts London, Photography BA, Kent Institute Of Art & Design, BA Painting, Nottingham Trent University, supervision of Graphic Design MA by independent study students,Nottingham Trent University, BA Graphic Design

Talks / seminars

PhD Research Methodologies - Reading University, Kingston University, Kent
Institute of Art and Design

Other -

University of California at San Diego, BA Communications

Girton College Cambridge MA in Jewish-Christian Relations
University of Wisconsin at Madison, USA, MA Visual Arts
University of Wisconsin at Madison, USA Centre for Jewish Studies
City University Ma in Arts Management
De Montford University, BA Communications/Art History
Birkbeck College, University of London, Dept. of Sociology, BA Politics &
Society, MSc in Politics & Development in Post-Colonial Societies, MSc in
The Politics of Globalization
West Surrey Instituted of Art and Design, Photography BA
University of East London, MA Fine Art, professional practice

Selected publications

Selected reviews and citations

Bloom Lisa, “Jewish Identities, Sexualities and Feminist Art”, Jews and Sex, (Ed. Nathan Abrams), Five Leaves Press, 2008, pp121-137, ISBN 978105512348

Blackwells Companion to Contemporary Art since 1945, ed. Amelia Jones, Blackwell 2006, featuring in "Implications of Blackness", Pauline de Souza, p. 373

The Undecidability of Difference: The Work of Rachel Garfield, Amelia Jones, Rachel Garfield catalogue touring show, UH Press, 2005, pp. 19-34,

Unframed: The Practices and Politics of Women Painting, Rosemary Betterton (ed.), ‘Restretching the Canvas’, Pam Skelton., IB Tauris Ltd, 2003, pp.162-175

Guardian Guide, Robert Clark review, ‘Garfield, Mojsiewicz And Samadian’, March15-23, pg. 34

Art Monthly, Dave Burrows, Review of 10th East International, no 239, September 2000, pp.32-34,

Selected published writings - chapters, reviews, exhibition catalogues

Anwar Jalal Shemza, Take 2: The British Landscape, Green Cardamom, Sept 2010 

"Rocket to the Moon", review of Kutlug Ataman film for Art Monthly, No 334, March 2010, P. 33, ISSN 01426702

  “A Particular Incoherence”,chapter monograph Between Truth and Fiction, The Films of Vivienne Dick, (ed Treasa O’Brian), Crawford Art Centre/Lux publication,2009,  ISBN 0-9548569-8-8

book review, Art Monthly, ‘Modern Art Culture’ Francis Frascina (ed), Routledge, 2009

l’Encyclopédie Noveaux Médias, Centre Pompidou, Paris, Museum Ludwig (Koln, Germany) and the "Centre pour l'image contemporaine", Geneva, Switzerland.,commissioned text on Zineb Sedira

Speaking with forked Tongue;: Keith Piper: http://www.luxonline.org.uk/artists/keith_piper/essay(1).html

‘Questioning Perceptions of Jewish Identity in the work of Ary Stillman’, chapter monograph, Ary Stillman: From Impressionism to Abstract Expressionism, (ed) James Wechsler, Wechsler, James (ed), Merrell, NY, 2008,
pp149 – 163, ISBN 9781858944333

‘Radical Uncertainty and Elegaic Practices’ in Aftershock: Conflict and Resolution in Contemporary Art, Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts/UH Galleries, catalogue essay (artists in exhibition include – Alfredo Jaar;
Atlas Group; Simon Norfolk amongst others), ISBN 9780946009558

In Our World: New Photography in Britain, (ed) Phillipo Maggia, Skira Photopraphy Italy, 2008, p 72, ISBN 9788861307810

Art History, 30:5 2007, “A Bifurcated History (And so it goes on)”, review of Lisa Bloom, Ghosts of Ethnicity, pp 785-791, ISSN 0141-6790

Avinash Chandra: A Reappraisal, catalogue essay for Chandra exhibition at Osbourne Samuel Fine Art, 2006

‘In Place of Paralysis’, Out of Conflict: Catherine Elwes and Cornford and Cross by Rachel Garfield and John Timberlake,, Artsway publications, 2004, ISBN: 0 954393031

Oreet Ashery: Transgressing the Sacred, R.Garfield, in CD Rom: ‘Alter Ego’ as catalogue for exhibition, curated by Wibke Behrens, Berlin, 2002

Refereed Journals

Journal of Media Practice “Articulating a Position Through Research; The Practice Led PhD, A case Study”, Autumn 2007, Vol 8.2, pp.221-234.

Axis web Dialogue, “on practice as research”, April 06

Third Text, “Towards a Re-articulation of Cultural Identity: Problematising the Jewish Subject in Art” , n. 78, Volume 20, issue 1, January 2006, pp 99-108,

The Jewish Quarterly, ‘Oreet Ashery: Transgressing the Sacred’, No. 186, 2002, pgs.11-13,

everything magazine, interview with 'City Racing' vol. 3 (4), 2002

Third Text, “Ali G: Who Does He Think He Is”, n54, Spring 2001, pp. 63-70,