Rebecca Chesney b. 1968, UK
Rebecca Chesney’s work is concerned with how we perceive land; how we romanticise, translate and define it. She looks at how politics, ownership, management and commercial value all influence our surroundings and has made extensive investigations into the impact of human activities on nature and the environment.
Weather, water quality, air pollution, land ownership and management, sea level rise, habitat loss and decline of species are all subjects Chesney’s work continues to examine, taking the form of installations, interventions, habitat creation, drawings, maps and walks.
Exploring the blurred boundaries between science and folklore, Chesney’s work is also concerned with how our understanding of nature is fed by a confused mix of truth and fiction.
Exhibitions/commissions include HOME Manchester, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Compton Verney, Newlyn Art Gallery, the Brontë Parsonage Museum, and Grizedale Arts. Awards include a Gasworks International Fellowship at CONA in Mumbai, India and a Lucas Artist Fellowship at Montalvo Arts Centre, California, USA.
Residencies include TONSPUR in Vienna, Austria, the Nirox Foundation in South Africa, the Museo Casa Rural di Carcente in Italy, and the Brecon Beacons National Park, Wales.
Tents provide shelter in times of crisis or displacement, but they perform a very different role at music festivals where it is more common for cheap tents to be discarded than taken away by their temporary inhabitants. With the growing practice of charities collecting discarded tents for reuse, more tents are left behind as their users’ consciousness is eased by the idea they’ll go to ‘a good home’, without thinking about the social and environmental costs that produce them so cheaply.
Using the discarded fabric, in collaboration with FWRD (Festival Waste Reclamation and Distribution), Rebecca Chesney’s field of windsocks, Conditions at Present, serve as an indicator of current conditions; a barometer of the climate crisis of our own making.
Conditions at Present is a collaboration with the 2024 Harewood Biennial.
Tents provide shelter in times of crisis or displacement, but they perform a very different role at music festivals where it is more common for cheap tents to be discarded than taken away by their temporary inhabitants.