ALICE BLACK is proud to present a site-specific installation by British artist Rachael Louise Bailey (b. 1975). 'In-habit' represents the artist’s most personal work to date.
Bailey’s practice is a form of artistic whistle-blowing. Pushing the boundaries of art’s engagement with ecology, her practice is rooted in a local context, but has a worldwide reach embedded in the social, political, economic and environmental spheres she seeks to address and expose.
In 'In-habit' a room lined with wallpaper designed from washed up plastic oyster sacks houses a pair of sun bleached curtains salvaged from a house clearance. Owned by the same family for over 80 years and recently demolished, all signs of life were removed down to the last blade of grass. These hand made Curtains of San Remo are all that remain. A window from the past, reflecting the present and framing the future.
Amongst the curtains and wallpaper are Intensetimes, a vitrine-like assemblage of material intestines, corporeal yet insistently artificial. Abreast, comprising of the same materials, tupped wool and nylon and Hear no, See no, a Bronze ear cast from an oyster shell bearing the scars of the plastic oyster sacks.
Rachael Louise Bailey (b. 1975) lives and works in Kent, UK. Bailey studied at Statuaria Arte School of Sculpture, Cararra, Italy (2004); Conception de jardin dans le paysage, Formation Professionnel - Ecole Nationale Suprieure du Paysage, Versailles, France (2006-08). Direct Carving Stone and Wood, Formation Professionnel-Beaux Arts de la Ville de Paris, France (2010-14); In 2019 Bailey won the Fondation Francois Schneider, Contemporary Talents International Art Award as well as the An Lanntair Island Going Residency in the Outer Hebrides. In 2025 Bailey was featured in an ‘Uncommon Thread’ at Hauser & Wirth, Somerset. Her work is included in the permanent collection of the Fondation Francois Schneider, France.
INSTALLATION VIEWS
