Walter Van Rijn

How Can You And I Ever Be Free In the 21st C?
My work explores the natural and digital networked world and its many contradictions. From big data to detail, from large collections to one object, entities move through both these worlds and are transformed and hybridised by it. How Can You And I Ever Be Free In the 21st C?, is a question I keep on asking. And what is Freedom from human rights and environmental point of view?

I create work that combines art and design, hybrids of image and text in digital and analogue form. The artworks can take any shape and have an unusual and speculative way of distribution and communication. Recently, I use meta-data as my material and create work in the form of typefaces, fictive collections and algorithmic text-based work. A cross-media practice which is dispersed alongside exhibited multi-media installations through printed matter, performances, public art, and websites. I am born in the Netherlands and live and work in the UK.

2015 PhD Fine Art. Thesis: Rethinking The Status Of The Art Object Through Distribution. University of Southampton.
2007 MA Fine Art by Project with distinction. Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton. Awarded Art & Humanities Research Council funding. Profiled by AXIS: Selected MA Graduates.

2018 Time After Time, John Hansard Gallery. Curated by Stephen Foster. Artists: Caroline Bergvall, Victor Burgin, Hamad Butt, John Latham, and Charlotte Posenenske, Walter van Rijn. Performances with Jane Birkin and Iain Morrison (poet in residence).
2018 Print and Process. Special Collections Gallery, Hartley Library Uni. of Southampton.
2018 Instagram exhibition, online @VVVR___ Unconsumable Global Luxury Dispersion.
2017 SO: To Speak Festival of Words in Southampton. Performance with Jane Birkin.
2017 How Can You & I Ever Be Free In The 21stC. Poster on public billboard 3x6m. #REDboard2017. Commissioned by Red Contemporary Arts. Funded by Hull UK City of Culture.
2016-2018 Unconsumable Global Luxury Dispersion. Research & Development project at the John Hansard Gallery. Commissioned by the gallery and supported by the Arts Council England.
2016 Designed and published Being Human Font software [https://fontlibrary.org/en/font/being-human]
2015 Telephone. Collaboration with The Satellite Collective, New York. Showing Off-Site Desert Showroom (2013).
2014 Image-Text-Object: Practices of Research. Hartley Library Gallery L4 (University of Southampton).
2013 Furtherfield Gallery. IRL exhibition 0P3NR3P0 as part of Gl...