Artist : Rebecca Harper
Title : Camouflage at the Edge
Medium : acrylic on unprimed canvas
Dimensions : 80 x 80 cm


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Much of Rebecca Harper’s work has revealed itself through a diasporic consciousness which can often involve a multiplicity of belonging and a sense of difference, often one of ‘otherness’ and displacement. The identity of the displaced positioning is a paradox between location and dislocation, out of place everywhere and not completely anywhere. Generally, the work frames expressions of ‘being’ and manifests itself within an unfolding, wondering, allegoric commentary on the locations that she inhabits and those which inhabit her.

Recent work explores a cast of reoccurring characters that rotate around the outskirts of the house that she grew up in, where she also found herself locked down during Covid. This work is a part of a body of work that acknowledges the human and worldly capacity to live at the edge of the precipice. The characters are never seen as portraits as such, more like actors that play a role, filling in for particular people, as they fill a stage. As Rebecca says of the figure who resembles herself; “It feels like perhaps this woman, has almost become a guiding spirit of myself, one of vulnerability and strength in the dealings of uncertainty, instability loss, and grief. She shows up reliably again and again during terrible turbulence.”

Harper was born in London in 1989, where she continues to live and work. She studied at UWE Bristol then The Royal Drawing School and Turps Art School (Postgraduate’s). Rebecca was Artist in Residence at The Santozium Museum, Santorini, in summer 2019, and Artist in Residence for the Ryder Project Space at A.P.T Studios, Deptford in 2018-19 before becoming a studio and committee Member in 2019.  She was winner of the ACS Studio Prize in 2018. Chameleon, her debut solo show at Anima Mundi met with great acclaim including a review in the FT by Jackie Wullshlager. Most recently Rebecca was selected for The John Moore’s Painting Prize 2021, and previously selected for Bloomberg New Contemporaries in 2018 at South London Gallery, Other curated shows include Huxley Parlour, Public Gallery, The Royal Academy Summer Show, Christies London and NYC, Flowers Gallery’, Paul Stolper Gallery, Turps Art Gallery and Arusha Gallery. Her work is on long term display in the Albright Collection at Maddox Street Club in London curated by Beth Greenacre and at the Santozeum Museum in Santorini. Harper is represented in many public and private collections internationally including the Ullens and the Royal Collections.