Cohabitation

2022
The Black Stuff, oysters, wooden pegs
250x40cm

Rachael Louise Bailey’s environmentally charged practice has engaged with a specific marine pollutant she has been researching since 2015, self-titled “The Black Stuff”. These spliced inner tubes of repurposed car tyres are used internationally as part of oyster sea farming equipment. Unfit for purpose, they break loose in the sea and what does not sink into the seabed arrives back upon the shoreline. Her works Cohabitation (2017) and Rest (2019) are two pieces from this series.

In Rest (2019), moved by the experience of clearing the contents of her cousin’s home weeks after his sudden death, the artist was struck by the sheer volume of plastic waste destined for landfill. From this material—remnants of a life shaped by consumption and unsustainability—a skeletal figure began to take form: a coat hanger collarbone, a bike helmet chest, an alarm clock heart, fingers made of pens. Clothed in his smartest suit, wearing a favourite Father Christmas hat, and mummified in a polyester bedsheet, the figure was laid to rest in a plastic inflatable bed and encased in woven ‘black stuff’. This sculptural work reflects on grief, memory, and the persistent presence of the synthetic in life—and after.

Rachael Louise Bailey (b. 1975, Whitstable, UK) lives and works in Kent, UK. Her recent exhibitions include: The Horniman Museum, London, UK; Attenborough Arts Centre, Attenborough, UK; An Lanntair, Stornoway, UK; Alice Black, London, UK; XXII Bienal Internacional de Arte de Cerveira, PT; Villa Nova de Cerveira, PT; Fondation Francois Schneider, Alsace, FR; Oxo Tower, London, UK; A la K’s Gallery, Tokyo, JP; Clerkenwell Gallery, London, UK.