Rachel Garrard
Words and Interview by Mathias Bennet
A Piece with Artist – Artists with their Work and Studio interiors
January 2023
Rachel Garrard grew up in a scientist's house in Devon, England, which undoubtedly conditioned her way of creating. In her own words, her art is a journey in the liminal space between scientific research and esoteric practice. Through it, she has developed a symbolic language that intimately connects the internal with the cosmic and universal. Her work is a multidisciplinary practice made up of painting, sculpture, video, performance, installation and holographic projection. The paintings are composed of natural substances, such as quartz, ash or rock dust pigment, which she collected personally, ground by hand and applied to raw linen in a process of fine layers. They comprise a distinct language of geometric and symbolic forms that she has developed over many years, which are both personal imaginings and loose interpretations of propositions of quantum physics, such as M-theory and supersymmetry. She assimilates these theories with experiences she accesses through meditation. Her site specific ephemeral installations using nature as a medium interweave these forms in relation to specific natural phenomena, and their structure reflects the instability of form and the inevitability of change.
The cover of this article is part of her project "Collective Memories''. We asked Rachel about this project and also about her work and life.