Daniel Rapley

My practice explores the conventions of artistic labour and productivity, often instigating projects that necessarily require the completion of daunting feats of endurance. For example "˜Absenteeism', an undocumented process of hand polishing a stone away, "˜Sic', an ongoing project in which I am transcribing the Bible by hand, or drawings that meticulously simulate typographical content. The suppression of certain validating information serves to paradoxically nullify belief and destabilise the relationship of trust between the artifact and an audience.

The work is usually presented in installations, employing a range of contradicting display systems, which further examine the subject position. The resulting environments raise questions concerning the propositional nature of art, revealing the ambiguous boundaries between fact and fiction. My practice is underpinned by research, which considers contemporary notions of authenticity and authorship as positioned within a wider context of religious and mythological belief systems, exploring the art object as a conceptual phantasm of fundamentally supernatural structures.

2011 - Chelsea College of Art, London - MA (distinction)
2010 - Chelsea College of Art, London - Postgraduate Diploma
2001 - DeMontfort University, Leicester - BA Hons Fine Art (1st Class)