About the publication
We are delighted to publish a new book as part of our autumn 2023 exhibition Hair and Body by American artist Rachel Eulena Williams. The exhibition marks Williams' first solo exhibition in a UK institution, bringing together a new suite of works spanning painting, assemblage and installation. The work foregrounds the artist’s liberation of colour, radical exploration of materials and playful experimentation.
The publication contains a conversation between Williams and curator Jessica Taylor, focusing on the new work Williams made for the exhibition, her ways of working and the physical intimacy inherent in the making of and the interactions with the work. This conversation sits alongside a newly commissioned text by multidisciplinary artist Irineu Destourelles, which takes the form of a fictional interview – in reality, an imagined dialogue between Destourelles with the canon of modern art, tackling its understanding of colour. The publication also includes a preface by DCA Director Beth Bate, alongside full colour images of the exhibition.
About Rachel Eulena Williams
Rachel Eulena Williams is a Brooklyn-based artist, whose work sits at the boundary between the two and three-dimensional, spanning painting, sculpture, drawing, assemblage and printmaking. Found materials are frequently employed in the artist’s work, often widely available and everyday in nature. Williams works in an intuitive and improvisational way, taking apart and re-constructing her canvasses. Colour is central to the artist’s making and concerns – freeing colour from its Otherness within the traditions of Western art history.
Williams received a BFA from Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, New York in 2013. Her work has been exhibited internationally at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield (2022); The Modern Institute, Glasgow (2021); PACE Gallery, New York (2021); Canada Gallery, New York (2020); Loyal Gallery, Stockholm (2019); Ceysson & Bénétière, Saint-Étienne (2018); Night Gallery, Los Angeles (2018); Derek Eller Gallery, New York (2018); Cooper Cole, Toronto (2018); The Journal Gallery, Brooklyn, NY (2017); Mass Gallery, Austin (2017); SomeTime Salon, San Francisco (2017); and Center Street, New York (2017).
Williams undertook the Studio Immersion Project Fellowship at the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop, New York (2019). Her work is held in a number of collections, including the Perez Art Museum, Miami, and The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York.
| Date | November 2023 |
| Edition of | 500 |
| Design | Benjamin Fallon/Romulus Studio and Valerie Norris |
| ISBN | 978-1-8382711-5-2 |
| Dimensions | 18 x 18.1cm |
| Pages | 72 |
About Jessica Taylor
Jessica Taylor is a Barbadian curator and producer based in London. Her curatorial practice stems from an interest in developing contemporary exhibition models exploring matters of cultural contact and exchange, migration and movement, and transnationalism. She received a BA in Art History and Philosophy from McGill University, Montreal and an MA in Curating Contemporary Art from the Royal College of Art, London.
Taylor is currently Deputy Artistic Director at the International Curators Forum (ICF) in London, where she managed the Beyond the Frame and Diaspora Pavilion professional development programmes; co-curated Diaspora Pavilion, Venice (2017) and Wolverhampton (2018); Diaspora Pavilion 2 exhibition I am a heart beating in the world in Sydney (2021); and curated the Diaspora Pavilion 2 programme in London and Venice (2022-23).
She has also co-curated film and performance programmes at the Spark Festival in Hong Kong (2019); as part of the Jerwood Staging Series (2018), and at the Royal Academy London (2017) with artist Sheena Rose. Taylor also produced the exhibition Arrivants: Art and Migration in the Anglophone Caribbean World at the Barbados Museum (2018) and the multi-site programme Curating the International Diaspora in Sharjah, Barbados and Martinique (2016-8). She was a 2022 Research Fellow at the Caribbean Cultural Institute at the Perez Art Museum Miami.About Irineu Destourelles
Irineu Destourelles, also known as Irineu Rocha da Cruz, is a multidisciplinary visual artist who primarily works with moving-image, painting, and writing. His work is deeply rooted in the exploration of how colonialist narratives have been internalised by both colonial and postcolonial individuals.
His artworks have been exhibited at a number of established art centres, including the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon; MAMA Showroom, Rotterdam; Transmission Gallery, Glasgow; UNISA Art Gallery, Pretoria; and Videobrasil 18, São Paulo, amongst others. He received his training in Fine Arts at WdKA in Rotterdam and Central St Martins, London, and holds a PhD in Film Studies from UCL. Born in the Cape Verde Islands, Destourelles is currently based in Glasgow.
