Rachael Colley is an artist and senior lecturer in jewellery and metalwork at Sheffield Hallam University. She gained a BA (Hons) in 3D design, specialising in jewellery and silversmithing at Loughborough University in 2007 and obtained an MA from the Royal College of Art in 2010.
Moving between the fields of craft and contemporary visual art, Colley produces jewellery, tableware and sculptures for performances, exhibitions, installations and experimental dining events. Based in Sheffield, the UK’s ‘Steel City’ famed for its cutlery industry, she is continuously exploring the history of the material whilst playing with the associations of cutlery as an implement for eating, challenging our collective connections with food.
Colley is focussed on working with metal, and manipulates the plasticity of the material to create an emotive, affective space. The works emulate her bodily experience of living with the auto-immune disease systemic sclerosis, which causes internal tissues and organs to harden and atrophy over time. Colley’s work is exhibited internationally. A piece from her award-winning Sha-green jewellery series is held in the permanent collection of the Museum of Arts and Crafts, Itami, Japan.
Website: rachaelcolleyartist.wordpress.com
Instagram: @rachaelcolleyartist
Twitter: @JammieColley
In the Same Breath - installation view of Rachael Colley, Germination, 2023 (fabricated in collaboration with Darren Richardson), Negative Female, 2022
–23 and On the Grass (Sur L’Herbe), 2023 (risograph print created in collaboration with Inari Hulkkonen, Ashleigh Armitage and Laura Mansfield, photography by Jules Lister.).
Photos: Andy Stagg
The curved steel sculpture enacts a playful, grounded site for eating or a frame for exercise, movement and interaction. Interacting with the sculptures in collaboration with dancer Inari Hulkkonen, our internal sensations were transported into a somatic practice. Eating as shivering. The tension in the metal and our moving muscles - from pulsating oesophagus to taught outstretched limbs.
Rachael Colley
Banner image: Rachael Colley, Negative Female, 2022-23, milled yoga bricks (foam and cork). Photo by Jules Lister
