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Rachel Lonsdale
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Performance, text, installation, writer
London
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Rachel is a visual artist living and working in London (b. Teesside). Her work humours performativity that’s embedded in societal rules and expectations, particularly as a woman - rules on how to behave, converse, use objects and navigate a space. She takes small moments of human behaviour and restages them into fiction through performance, text, spoken word and installation. Each script and character is usually combined with stage directions and a commentators’ voice. Uncomfortably voyeuristic, the characters are deadpan and watched on a superficial level in an everyday setting, described as ‘The Woman’ or ‘The Man’.
The practice employs languages dependence on pitch and gesture. Idioms and wordplay find their way into her work, as do speech acts, which are acts that are used for requests, warnings, invitation, promises, apologies and prediction. Taking roots in customer service training and interactions with the public, her work magnifies absurdism that’s found in refined cultural codes.