INSIGHT: Week 7 | Rachel Goodyear

INSIGHT IS A NEW ONLINE PLATFORM PRESENTED BY PIPPY HOULDSWORTH GALLERY, DEBUTING WORK BY A DIFFERENT ARTIST EACH WEEK. NEW WORK MADE DURING LOCKDOWN WILL BE HIGHLIGHTED ALONGSIDE A short VIDEo PRESENTED BY THE ARTIST. 

'Despite, or perhaps because of the growth of digital media, contemporary artists such as […] Rachel Goodyear have returned to the simple act of pencil and watercolour drawing as a way of describing and giving shape to inner worlds, fragments of the unconscious, of fear and fantasy, containing their visions on small sheets of paper.'

Ann Coxon, Curator, International Art, Tate Modern, 2018

'overlooked by the grand narratives, the female form is overly present as the object of representation. This is perhaps the subtext of Goodyear's exhibition at Walsall, the faintly menacing title of which suggests both the struggle to be seen (to catch the sight of the person who is looking) and vision as a trap, as something to be wary of.' 

Amy Sherlock, Deputy Editor, Frieze, 2017

'Goodyear’s people and creatures are located in a white and boundless world. It is both an unknown place and one which is familiar: the place of a dreamlike state and perhaps, too, the place where we feel most alone and distant from society – the hinterland of the mind.'

Clare Lilley, Director, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, 2011

'Goodyear guides us on a journey; a world of fragments, false memories, fears and desires.'

Deborah Robinson, Head of Exhibitions, The New Art Gallery Walsall, 2017

‘Rachel Goodyear finds unlikely relationships in everything she encounters, with her ideas as likely to come from the mundaneness of everyday life as from extraordinary events. Her delicate pencil drawings strike a tentative balance between playfulness and fear, between the ordinary and the bizarre, between beauty and the macabre.'

 Christoph Grunenberg, former Director, Tate Liverpool, 2009