Rachel Goodyear's 2026 drawing Knots is featured on the cover of more eaze's 2026 album sentence structure in the country. Her work has been reproduced across both their vinyl and CD albums. The album is produced by Thrill Jockey.
Using familiar yet incongruous imagery, Goodyear’s intricately rendered drawings and films explore the macabre undertones of the human condition. Referencing dreams, nightmares, the psyche and traditional folklore, her works capture vivid, hallucinatory experiences.
However uncomfortable or inexplicable their situation, Goodyear’s representations of women hold their own space. Each engages in specific tasks or movements – whilst the logic of the activity is often unclear, concentration or the exertion of will is demonstrable. In Knots (2024), two women are focused on unravelling the tangled legs of the octopuses around them, their serenity and quiet focus at odds with their strange, slippery task.
Rachel Goodyear (b. 1978, Lancashire, UK) studied at Hopwood Hall, Rochdale, and Leeds Metropolitan University. Her recent solo exhibitions include Stirrings, Grundy Art Gallery, Blackpool, travelling to Salford Museum & Art Gallery, Salford (2022-23); Solitary Acts, Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, online, London (2021); Catching Sight, The New Art Gallery, Walsall (2017); and Dancing Devils, Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, The Box, London (2018). Goodyear has been selected for the Innsbruck International Biennale of the Arts, Austria (2016); the Curitiba Biennale, Brazil (2013); Liverpool Biennial (2008); and The Drawing Biennial, The Drawing Room, London (2017, 2015, 2013). Her collections include the Victoria & Albert Museum, London; Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool; The Whitworth, Manchester; The Olbricht Collection, Berlin; Museum Folkwang, Essen; Bury Art Gallery and Museum, Bury St Edwards; Collection Pennine Arts, UK; and The New Art Gallery, Walsall, among others.
