Rebecca Stern is a British artist living and working in Newcastle, Australia.
Rebecca's work asks questions from the position of a mother yet with the curiosity of a child. Continuously considering and evaluating the position of a child within her own life and within a capitalist society, she addresses the personal and the universal issues of the maternal experience.
Having been inspired by the work of Mary Kelly, she intends to create a space for a maternal voice within the art gallery and institution. Through engaging with feminist art she suggests serious inclusion of the child and all that motherhood brings with it into the intellectual discourse that Art can produce. Her recent work ‘Got Wheels’, a series of fly posters featuring ready-made, in-use buggies, explores the commodification of childhood itself. Photographed alone, the images of the buggies explore the consequences for the identity of the absent family as a baby and it’s accessories come to be part of their own definition. It makes visual the hypothetical desires of the parents and how these manifest as material purchases, which simultaneously reflect, alter and impact upon their lifestyle choices.
Her work is multi-disciplinary, with an emphasis on language, narrative and its relation to image. There is often an indulgence in tactility, from handmade hanging gauze tights to engraved milk bottles and embroidered chairs. Honest playfulness and ambiguity leave the work to be completed by the viewer’s own thoughts and conclusions. The experience of her work is absorbing and inviting whilst always being a little strange and unexpected.
Education
2008-2011 Critical Fine Art Practice, BA (Hons), University of Brighton
2006-2007 Foundation Diploma in Fine Art, Central Saint Martins
Gallery work
2012 Newcastle Art Gallery, NSW, Australia
2011 Whitworth Gallery, Manchester, Mary Kelly Projects, 1973-2010
2008 Hayward Gallery, London Southbank, Psycho Buildings
2007 Victoria & Albert Museum, London, Image Library
Exhibitions
Basement
2011
Co-curated exhibition with Eleanor Lane and Tamsin Wier. Showing work of selected Brighton graduate artists
The Basement, 10 Brunswick Square, BN3 1EH, Brighton, UK
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Departures
2011
Critical Fine Art Practice Level 6, Degree Show
Room 206/7 University of Brighton, Grand Parade, UK
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Off The Latch
2010
Collaborative project with Hannah Bishop and Eleanor Lane
Stall 41, Open Market, Brighton, UK
Review by Joanne Lee
Here and Now
2010
Brighton Fine Art Level 5
University of Brighton Gallery, Grand Parade, UK
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99p
2009
Critical Fine Art Practice Level 4
The abandoned Music Library, Church Street, Brighton, UK
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