Raksha Patel is a visual artist and filmmaker. She was born in Leicester and received her MFA from The Slade School of Art, 1998. Her work investigates ideas of change and disintegration through pseudo botanical images that bear anthropomorphic qualities relating to the human body. Patel has undertaken residencies with Idle Women and Kettles Yard.
In addition to her studio practice she has worked as an artist-educator at Serpentine as well as Tate Modern, giving gallery talks to adults and young people since 2000. Her recent projects include a large-scale mural on a Lancashire Mill with the arts organisation Idle Women, 2016.
Patel was the lead artist in Iniva’s ArtLab 2018/19 with The Opossum Federation Schools. ArtLab connects artists with art therapists to hold a series of workshops in schools exploring shared values and emotional development through the arts. Following the workshops, Patel created a response to the children’s work, incorporating their images and repositioning them within her own practice.
In 2008, Patel contributed to the project ‘The Mausoleum of Lost Objects’ presented at Iniva and led by Matthew Krishanu who invited a range of artists to create work in memory of a lost object. Inspired by Hew Locke’s exhibition ‘The Kingdom of the Blind’ as well as the idea of a mausoleum – a monument that commemorates the dead – ‘The Mausoleum of Lost Objects’ is a display infused with a collective sense of the past, of missing objects and reconstructed memories.
Her selected exhibitions include ‘Uproot, The South London Botanical Institute The Endless Circle’, Hotel Elephant, London (2018); ‘Basic Human Needs’, Wales (2016); ‘The Trouble with Painting Today’, Pump House Gallery (2015); ‘The Roadside Museum’, Basement Arts, Leeds (2015); ‘Forget-Me-Knot’, Pitzhanger Manor Gallery (2013); ‘Tradition and the Passing Down of Culture’, Pump House Gallery, (2013); ‘We were Trying to Make Sense’, 1 Shantiroad, Bangalore (2013); ‘Collision’, Nancy Victor Gallery, (2013); ‘Jerwood Drawing Prize’, Jerwood Gallery and touring, London(2011); ‘Paint’, Beldham Gallery, Brunel University London (2010); ‘Postcards from Dystopia’, Nolias Gallery London (2009); ‘The Mausoleum of Lost Objects’, inIVA – Rivington Space, London (2008); ‘The Redemptive Beauty of Life After Death’, The Bonnington Gallery Nottingham (2007); and ‘Creative Connections’, Whitechapel Gallery (2005).
Raksha Patel lives and works in London.