Artist and Educator
Hybrid practice across drawing, photography, writing and artists books
About
Dr. Rachel Smith
I am an artist and educator with a hybrid practice, using text, drawing, and various media to produce artists books.
My work flies through existing texts, as Hélène Cixous writes “taking pleasure in jumbling the order of space, in disorienting, breaking, and emptying”. I use association, error, and distraction to explore how sense might be sought, rejected, and re-fused. I embrace a meandering lostness in language, creating space for the as-yet-unthought; materialising fragmentary routes through existing texts as a neuro-queer reader/writer/maker; questioning given or expected structures.
I co-edit Intergraphia Books an artist led publishing project with Emma Bolland.
EDUCATION:
Ph.D. Sheffield Hallam University, (2020)
Practice-led Interdisciplinary research across Fine Art, and Creative Writing
Drawing out Language: From Or to And, Disrupting Dualism through Conceptual Poetics.
DOS: Dr. Sharon Kivland,
MA Fine Art, Sheffield Hallam University, (2013)
PGCE, Bretton Hall, (1995)
BA(Hons), Fine Art, Staffordshire University, (1994)
LECTURING & TUTORING:
University of Creative Arts
Distance Learning through the Open College of the Arts (2014 - current)
Programme Tutor for Creative Arts HE4 - HE6
Associate Lecturer at Greater Manchester University (2022 - current
Response to Text HE5 studio/critical module
PUBLICATIONS, EXHIBITIONS, PRESENTATIONS
2025
Presentation of Artists book methods and practice at the VERSE VERSA: Artist books and Visual Poetry symposium at The Warburg Institute London
Carbon Bodies, pamphlet publication, published by NO Press, Canada
Carbon Bodies, There's a full stop in my body, ellipsis, in Salon II Group show BLOC Meanwhile Space, Sheffield
Carbon Bodies, There’s a full stop in my body, in Let’s Talk about Text group exhibition, Bolton Hive CiC
Performance of Breath:e St(utter)ance as part of Let's Talk about text event, Bolton Hive CiC
Performance of Lines that Echo: stopping short as part of Checked Out exhibition events Sheffield,
2024
stopping. Or artist book, part of the AMBruno project Intervals, launched at Tate Britain, collected in Tate Library permanent collection and Henry Moore Institute library
Fragments from Small gestures in While we can group exhibition, Bolton Hive CIC
Small Gestures of Endurance artist book published by Penteract Press, UK
2023
Visual poems Stifled and Incongruous included in Steel Incisors Anthology
Performance of Breath:e St(utter)ance as part of A.L.L festival, Cambridge
Breath:e St(utter)ance artist book published by Timglaset, Sweden
Fold | Unfold Fragment IIII commissioned by copypages.org as part of Copy Unfold II publication
Read(writ)ing Words translated into Finnish by Atte Koskinen, included in Tuli & Savu journal, Finland
Fold Unfold: fragment III reading at Emma Bolland’s Speaking Architectures exhibition event, Sheffield
Various works included as part of Continuum exhibition at Hive, Bolton
Performance of Breath:e St(utter)ance at Allie Carr’s Scratch night, Site gallery, Sheffield
2022
Promise the Infinite exhibition at UWE Library, Bristol, curated by Sarah Bodman
Breath:e / St(utter) published online in the featured writing section of Osmosis Press
Promise the Infinite: Drawing out Babel, artist book published by Penteract Press
Only Lily, Dreams of the Ocean, and Traces of Reading included the Book of Penteract anthology
‘Visualising Reading' paper presentation at the Image/Text, What next? conference, University of York
Artist talk with image and text workshop using physical collage and indesign techniques, Bolton University,
MA Creative Writing Masterclass: Creative presentation with Emma Bolland, Sheffield Hallam University
2021
‘Read(writ)ing’ paper presentation online at the Special Interest Group in Language-based Artistic Research Conference
2020
Read(writ)ing Words, artist book published by Penteract Press
Writing a Rhizomatic Self, practice as research essay, published online by Babel Tower Noticeboard
Brushing Off Shadows of Doubt, Group show, Prosaic III, exhibition, Huddersfield
The Work as Will, edited and type-set work by Roland Barthes Reading Group, published by Inscription Journal and Barthes Studies journal vol. 7
Roland Barthes’s Party, with Roland Barthes Reading Group, published by MA Bibliotheque
Interviewed for the Penteract Poetry Podcast: https://penteractpress.com/penteract-poetry-podcast
Catching sight of the Salt cellar, included in the compendium and group show: Salon for a Speculative Future, at Chisenhale Studios, London published by MA Bibliotheque
2019
Promise the infinite, Group show for Prosaic II at Bloc Studios, Sheffield
Lines that Echo, included in Sheffield Dostoyevsky Cities Anthology ed. Emma Bolland
Eco's Net: Rhizome I, included in group show Prosaic at Coterie Gallery, Rotherham
2018
Interrupteur Artist residency at the faculty of Humanities the University of Sheffield. Two month residency working with Artists and Academics from the Humanities dept. to forge conversations and collaborations between practice and research ideas.
And And And, included in the Penteract Anthology Concrete and Constraint Anthology
Voler: to Steal and Fly, pamphlet work published by Penteract Press
The Desire for Haiku, with Roland Barthes Reading Group published by MA Bibliotheque
2017
Lines of Flight, published as part of the AMBruno [sic] project
Intention Correction, Crux 9 International Journal of Conceptual Writing, ed. by Riccardo Boglione
Cropped Remainder, To Write: an Intransitive Verb, Marginalia, Figure and Ground, text and photographic works, included in the group Phantom Exhibition, curated by Jane Boyer, Anglia Ruskin Gallery, Cambridge
Discussion Panel, for Phantom research exhibition and symposium, chaired by Jane Boyer, Anglia Ruskin University,
Performance of Intentions are according to Corrections, as part of the Enemies Project poetry Tour curated by Stephen Fowler and Tom Jenks
2016
Dialogue with Jean Paul Sartre collaborative exhibition and reading events with HMRC at Bank Street Arts, Sheffield
Testing Testing Group exhibition at SIA, Sheffield
Creative paper presentation at Testing Testing, Ph.D. research group exhibition and symposium
Reading Words, published as part of the AMBruno words project, collected in Tate library collection
2015
Drawing out Language, Artist Residency, part of the Leeds College of Art Library Intervention project
Paper presentation at the Method conference, C3ri SHU, Sheffield
‘Materiality’ paper presentation at Photography Matters Conference, OCA, Doncaster
2014
Typing Twitter, Language of Lists exhibition, Text Festival, Bury
White Noise, artist book included in The Card Index as Writing Machine exhibition, The Tetley, Leeds
Drawing by Definition, durational drawing, Where is the work? group exhibition, S1 Basement Sheffield
Documenter in Residence, Wrought one-to-one performance festival, Sheffield
2013
Paper presentation at the Generative Constraints Conference, RHUL, London
Artist in residence at Bank Street Arts, Sheffield