2025-2026 KHAC Artist in Residence
Rachel Warwick, September 2025 - August 2026
Rachel Warwick, September 2025 - August 2026
If Roland Barthes is correct in describing photography as a form of theatre; a performance enacted between photographer and subject, then Rachel Warwick's photographs are concerned with what remains after the performance has ended, before the curtains fall.
Drawn to the objects that have been pushed aside, rearranged, discarded, or left behind through acts of human intervention. They appear as abandoned beings: traces of presence that point toward an absent body. Warwick's work investigates this tension through images in which people are notably absent, yet their actions remain embedded within the environment. Objects become evidence of encounters, gestures, and memories that can no longer be fully accessed.
Through photography, sound, and sculpture, they explore how spaces accumulate memory, how communication falters, and how meaning shifts over time. Their practice centres on perceptual disconnection, spatial representation, and the limits of communication. Interested in the ways place, time, and decay alter our relationship to images, objects, and one another. Working across media allows them to consider how sensory experience extends beyond vision, attending to the material and affective qualities of environments that resist straightforward interpretation.
Alongside a solo practice, Rachel has also worked collaboratively with several artists since 2017. The most recent is a publication formed, shaped, and produced by two texts (Nadja, Andre Breton and I Love Dick, Chris Kraus) shared between collaborator Aidan Branch and themselves. The work developed to become a game of recto-verso, of parts and wholes, of the speed and rhythm of turning the pages in a book–into a conversation around art. Rachel’s collaborative practice dives into personal and collective experiences guided by influential thinkers such as Pleshette DeArmitt, Celine Condorelli, and Rosi Braidotti to sustain work within a safe and mutually beneficial environment that starts between artist-to-artist and then artist-to-audience.
Rachel Warwick (she/they) is a queer, Irish-Canadian multidisciplinary artist living and working on the unceded territories of the Coast Salish peoples, including the sə́l̓ilwətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), and S’ólh Téméxw (Stó:lō) Nations. They received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Simon Fraser University's School for the Contemporary Arts in 2020. Since graduating, Warwick has exhibited in group exhibitions throughout the Lower Mainland and Metro Vancouver. In 2023, they participated in an artist residency with Studio Kura, culminating in a presentation of their work at the Itoshima International Art Festival in Itoshima.
Drawn to the objects that have been pushed aside, rearranged, discarded, or left behind through acts of human intervention. They appear as abandoned beings: traces of presence that point toward an absent body. Warwick's work investigates this tension through images in which people are notably absent, yet their actions remain embedded within the environment. Objects become evidence of encounters, gestures, and memories that can no longer be fully accessed.
Through photography, sound, and sculpture, they explore how spaces accumulate memory, how communication falters, and how meaning shifts over time. Their practice centres on perceptual disconnection, spatial representation, and the limits of communication. Interested in the ways place, time, and decay alter our relationship to images, objects, and one another. Working across media allows them to consider how sensory experience extends beyond vision, attending to the material and affective qualities of environments that resist straightforward interpretation.
Alongside a solo practice, Rachel has also worked collaboratively with several artists since 2017. The most recent is a publication formed, shaped, and produced by two texts (Nadja, Andre Breton and I Love Dick, Chris Kraus) shared between collaborator Aidan Branch and themselves. The work developed to become a game of recto-verso, of parts and wholes, of the speed and rhythm of turning the pages in a book–into a conversation around art. Rachel’s collaborative practice dives into personal and collective experiences guided by influential thinkers such as Pleshette DeArmitt, Celine Condorelli, and Rosi Braidotti to sustain work within a safe and mutually beneficial environment that starts between artist-to-artist and then artist-to-audience.
Rachel Warwick (she/they) is a queer, Irish-Canadian multidisciplinary artist living and working on the unceded territories of the Coast Salish peoples, including the sə́l̓ilwətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), and S’ólh Téméxw (Stó:lō) Nations. They received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Simon Fraser University's School for the Contemporary Arts in 2020. Since graduating, Warwick has exhibited in group exhibitions throughout the Lower Mainland and Metro Vancouver. In 2023, they participated in an artist residency with Studio Kura, culminating in a presentation of their work at the Itoshima International Art Festival in Itoshima.
