The Pursuit of Truth
By Ashleigh Kane
Dazed Digital
October 17, 2014
Artist Rachel Garrard didn't have the most usual of upbringings. She grew up in a house of scientists; something that she believes has ultimately – and unavoidably – affected her work. “We are all marked by our own experiences in life, and I feel the work I make can’t help but be a kind of amalgamation of experiences and incorporate a worldview that I feel is intrinsically true,” she explains. Speaking of truth, her latest work, and first solo exhibition Vessel, is based on it – the pursuit of truth, in fact, or in particular; the "notions of visibility, impermanence, interconnectedness and essence”. Running over the past month – with this weekend your last chance to see it – it has seen Garrard looking inwards to herself, drawing from the contours of her own body by creating geometric shapes, which almost glow on their selected canvas. Alongside these, a durational performance piece sees the artist who, enamoured by the idea of birth, death and rebirth, cages herself in a ‘vessel’, just as, she explains, “the physical body temporarily houses the soul”. Below, we talk to Garrard about going beyond, the importance of disconnecting and the continual search for truth.