Rachel Gadsden trained as an actor before studying for a BA and MA in Fine Art; and in some senses still draws upon those early acquired theatrical and physical skills in her career as a visual artist. Expressionistic in approach, Gadsden creates vibrant, energetic, dramatic artworks incorporating assemblage, painting, performance and film in developing a cross-cultural visual language and dialogue.

Gadsden’s work explores the physical, historical and personal experience that forms the human condition. In 2007 she was appointed the first contemporary artist in Residence at Hampton Court Palace for Historic Royal Palaces. Other site-specific commissions have taken her to a colliery in South Wales, the Houses of Parliament for a 2009 General Election Commission, Khayelitsha Township in South Africa; and also to the now derelict Cane Hill and North Wales Asylum hospitals, where the researched experiences of patients and staff became the subject of the work – including the performance Loanda Matilda Wall, an exploration of the consciousness of a patient of the same name who was temporarily admitted to the hospital in 1876.

The histories of all such places, serve for Gadsden as a metaphor for the physical and psychological nature of what it is to be human. Aesthetically rich and layered, the work shown in GV Art’s exhibition reveals the breadth and energy of Gadsden’s artistic output to date, addressing notions of fragility, survival and hope.

A multi-award winning artist, Gadsden was recently awarded an International Unlimited London 2012 Commission for Unlimited Global Alchemy and is also leading a spectacular outdoor visual art/dance/film performance commission for the London 2012 Paralympics Torch Relay.

Rachel Gadsden is a contemporary British artist. She gained her BA degree in Painting from Wimbledon School of Art in 1998 and her MA degree in Fine Art from City and Guilds of London Art School in 2001. Gadsden traverses various media from drawing and painting to performance and workshops. She has won a variety of awards including the Artsadmin Digital Media Bursary in 2005 and the Most Popular Painting Prize, Hunting Art Prize, in 2003 at the Royal College of Art, London.

GV Art is a contemporary art gallery which aims to explore and acknowledge the inter-relationship between art and science, and how the areas cross over and inform one another. The gallery produces exhibitions and events that create a dialogue focused on how modern man interprets and understands the advances in both areas and how an overlap in the technological and the creative, the medical and the historical are paving the way for new aesthetic sensibilities to develop.

GV Art
49 Chiltern Street
London W1U 6LY nearest tube Baker Street
Tel: 020 8408 9800

Opening hours
Tuesday to Friday 11am – 6pm,
Saturdays 11am – 4pm or by appointment.
Admission free