about
Rebecca Byrne is an American painter living and working in London; she works on canvas and aluminum, as well as 9m long paper which she uses to create immersive site-responsive installations that can be rolled up and reinterpreted in another location. Her interest is in the psychological impact of spaces, both man-made and natural, and she presents strange landscapes that reflect an interior world.
Byrne’s uncanny and fantastical landscapes are rooted in fragments of memory, reality and fantasy, they explore our relationship to the environment by referencing images of extinct and existing plant life that never actually co-existed, creating pictures of nature in flux. Throughout her practice there is an obscured personal narrative; Byrne’s recent work draws from her background growing up in urban Chicago and spending weekends with her parents as they attempted to establish a small organic farm well before most people were considering our relationship to the land. Researching the systems and structures of plants, she uses real and imagined subject matter to propose an alternate natural world.
Beginning with intuitive gestural marks that cover the surface and become seeds for the painting that follows, Byrne reacts to these early marks by drawing, scratching into and layering up to an image until the surface becomes a palimpsest of painting. She repeats her subject matter, mining the constant state of change in the natural world to explore the parallels she finds in the limitless language of painting.
education
The Chelsea College of Art And Design, London, MA Fine Art, 2012
The Chelsea College of Art And Design, London, Post Graduate Diploma Fine Art, 2010
exhibitions
Solo Show
2017
Room, Vincent Van GoghHuis Museum, Van GoghGalerie, Zundert, NE, 2017
Selected Group Shows
2022
Healing Space, GIANT Gallery, Bournemouth, UK
New Mythologies, OHSH Projects, London, UK
STILL LIFE / LIFE STILL, OHSH Projects, London, UK
A Spring Gathering, San Mei Gallery, London, UK
2021
NatureMAX, curated by Paul Carey-Kent, GIANT Gallery, Bournemouth, UK
Hospital Rooms Auction, Hauser & Wirth Gallery, London, UK
Pacific Breeze II, White Conduit Projects, London, UK
A Voyage of Absurdity, Craft Central Gallery, London, UK
This Year’s Model 21, Studio 1.1, London, UK
The Waiting Place, The Art Station, Saxmundham, Suffolk, UK
2020
Water Dance for Live More, St. Charles Centre for Health and Wellbeing, NHS, London, UK
Octagon Foundations for Live More, St. Charles Centre for Health and Wellbeing, NHS, London, UK
Hospital Rooms Auction, Hauser & Wirth Gallery, London, UK
2019
Woodlands, curated by Tim A Shaw and Niamh White of Hospital Rooms, Waterfront Gallery, Ipswich, UK (publication)
The Roulote Projectos Artisticos, JustLX, Lisbon, Portugal (invited)
One of One, After Projects, London, UK
Stop, Look, Listen, Feel, Platform Projects, Battersea Evolution, London, UK
Capitulo I, AMAC, Lisbon, Portugal
2018
Pacific Breeze, White Conduit Projects, London, UK
Paper Cuts, Kristian Day at Saatchi Gallery, London, UK
The Florence Trust Summer Show, The Florence Trust, London, UK (publication)
IN QUOTES, Gerald Moore Gallery, London, UK
The Florence Trust Winter Open, London, UK
2017
Control to Collapse, Blyth Gallery, London, UK (co-curated, with a publication)
PIY PaintLounge, Sluice Biennial, London, UK
Make a Mark (Top 30 Contemporary Female Painters in London), ArtHouse1 Gallery, London, UK (publication)
Creekside Open 2017, Prizewinner, selected by Alison Wilding RA, A.P.T. Gallery, London, UK
This Space is Occupied, Unit 1 Gallery | Workshop, London, UK
2016
Paper Cuts, Kristian Day at Transition Gallery, London, UK
Dentons Art Prize Autumn/Winter 2016, Shortlist Exhibition, London, UK (publication)
Platform Projects @ Art Athina 2016, LUBOMIROV / ANGUS-HUGHES Athens, Greece
Pool, Griffin Gallery, London, UK (co-curated, with a publication)
2015
The Poor Door, A-side B-side Gallery, London, UK
En Plein Air, curated by Clair Joy, Bloomsbury Square, London, UK
2014
Things That Don’t Breathe, The Chelsea Arts Club, London, UK
Passport to Pimlico May Day, Curated by Lana Locke, Churchill Garden Estates, London, UK
2013
Slice, The Hanmi Gallery, London, UK (co-curated)
The ArtLacuna Prize 2013, ArtLacuna Gallery, London, UK
neo:artprize2013 Exhibition, neo:gallery22, Bolton, UK
SHIFT, The Hanmi Gallery, London, UK
3 Cases and a Carry On, Dianich Gallery, Vermont, USA
2012
The Griffin Art Prize, The Griffin Gallery, London, UK
The Art Cabin, Group Show with George Little and Soo Eun Baik, London, UK
The Signature Art Prize, London, UK
The Chelsea College of Art and Design MA Fine Art Degree Show, London, UK
The Chelsea Collective, The Anteros Arts Foundation, Norwich, UK
MA Fine Art Interim Show, Triangle Space, Chelsea College of Art and Design, London, UK
awards and residencies
Chateau Orquevaux Residency 2022 (upcoming)
Awarded Arts Council Funding 2021, Developing Your Creative Practice (DYCP)
Live More Commission, St. Charles NHS PICU, funded by Allesch-Taylor Scholarship winner Matt Waugh, 2020
Hospital Rooms Commission, Woodlands Project, Ipswich NHS 136 Suite, ACE Funded Charity, 2019
Creekside Open 2017, Prizewinner, selected by Alison Wilding, RA
‘Make a Mark’, Top 30 Contemporary Female Painters in London, publication by Barry Bliss
PADA Studios Residency – February 2019, Lisbon, Portugal
The Florence Trust Residency 2017–2018
The Vincent van GoghHuis Artist-in-Residence 2017
Dentons Art Prize, Shortlisted 2016
The Bothy Residency 2016
APT Curatorial Fellowship, Shortlisted 2014
The ArtLacuna Prize Residency, Shortlisted 2013
The Griffin Art Prize, Shortlisted 2012
biography
Rebecca Byrne is an American artist and curator living in London, with a practice based in painting. In 2012 she completed her MA Fine Art from The Chelsea College of Art and Design. Byrne then co-founded PaintUnion in 2012, a discussion group for artists around ideas in contemporary painting, she also co-ran PIY PaintLounge at Sluice Biennial in 2017. Byrne was recently commissioned to create new work by the arts mental health charity Hospital Rooms for a project at Ipswich NHS and by mental health charity Live More for an installation at St. Charles NHS, Psychiatric Intensive Care Units, London.
Recent solo exhibitions include Room, at The Van GoghGalerie, Netherlands (2017). Group exhibitions include New Mythologies, OHSH Projects, London (2022); STILL LIFE / LIFE STILL, OHSH Projects, London (2022); Hospital Rooms Charity Auction, Hauser & Wirth, London (2020 and 2021); Stop Look Listen Feel, Platform Projects, Battersea Evolution (2019); The Florence Trust Summer Show, St. Saviours Church, London (2018); IN QUOTES, Gerald Moore Gallery, London (2018); Control to Collapse, Blyth Gallery, London (2017); PIY PaintLounge, Sluice Biennial 2017, London (2017); The Creekside Open 2017, Prizewinner, selected by Alison Wilding, RA; A.P.T. Gallery, London (2017); I Really Miss You Until You’re Here, White Conduit Projects, London (2017); and ‘Art Athina’ with Lubomirov-Easton Gallery, Athens (2016).
Byrne’s work is in private collections in the US, UK, Europe and Canada, as well as in the Vincent Van GoghHuis Museum Collection and the Hogan Lovells Collection.