Kate Rich

Last updated

Kate Rich
Born
Australia
NationalityAustralian
Known for
  • Sound
  • video art
  • sports art

Kate Rich is an Australian-born artist and trader based in Bristol, United Kingdom. Her interdisciplinary practice spans media art, social practice, hospitality, and alternative economies. She is a co-founder of the Bureau of Inverse Technology (BIT), an artist-engineer collective known for works shown at the 1997 Whitney Biennial, and the initiator of Feral Trade, a long-running grocery business and social experiment trading goods through social networks. [1] [2]

Contents

Career

Rich studied in Australia before moving to the United Kingdom in the 1990s. [3] Her work incorporates elements of sound, video, hospitality, and sport art, often exploring the intersection of art and systems of trade or logistics.

Bureau of Inverse Technology

In the mid-1990s Rich co-founded the Bureau of Inverse Technology (BIT) with artist-engineer Natalie Jeremijenko. BIT produced technologically driven works such as BIT Plane (1997), in which a remote-controlled aircraft equipped with a video camera flew over Silicon Valley, and Suicide Box, a motion-detecting device installed near San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge. [4] [5] Works by BIT were included in the 1997 Whitney Biennial. [6]

In 2003 Rich initiated Feral Trade, a grocery business using personal networks to transport goods such as coffee, olive oil, and chocolate across borders. The project has been described as “willfully wild (as in pigeon) rather than romantically wild (as in wolf).” Feral Trade has been exhibited internationally, including at Furtherfield in London and the Łódź Art Museum’s *Making Use* exhibition. [7]

She also co-created Cube Cola with Kayle Brandon, an open-source cola recipe and laboratory developed at the Cube Microplex in Bristol. [8]

In 2020 she launched the Feral MBA, an alternative business training programme for artists and others seeking to re-imagine enterprise. [9]

Residencies and fellowships

Rich was Artist-in-Residence at the McColl Center for Visual Art in Charlotte, North Carolina, in 2002. [10] In 2007 she received the Netarts.org Grand Prize from the Machida City Museum of Graphic Arts, Tokyo. [11] From 2008 to 2012 she collaborated with FoAM on *Food, Disaster, Culture*, a cultural laboratory in European cities. [12] In 2024 she became an Administrative Fellow at Hangar, Barcelona, [13] and in 2024–2027 she holds a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship with Brave New Alps in Italy, researching “radical administration.” [14]

Recognition

Rich’s projects have been discussed in international media and scholarly contexts, including The Guardian, Wired, Rhizome, Bidoun, and academic journals such as Unlikely and Places.

Selected writings

References

  1. Burrington, Ingrid (19 January 2017). "The Valley and the Predator". Rhizome. Retrieved 5 September 2025.
  2. Gibson, Owen (8 September 2009). "Artist runs café on 'feral trade' imports". Wired. Retrieved 5 September 2025.
  3. "Feral as in Pigeon: Kate Rich and Natascha Sadr". Bidoun. 2005. Retrieved 5 September 2025.
  4. "BIT Plane". V2_Institute for the Unstable Media. Retrieved 5 September 2025.
  5. "BIT Plane (1999)". Australian Centre for the Moving Image. Retrieved 5 September 2025.
  6. "Bureau of Inverse Technology". Whitney Museum of American Art. Retrieved 5 September 2025.
  7. "Feral Trade". Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź. Retrieved 5 September 2025.
  8. Flint, James (28 July 2006). "The real thing. Or is it? Cracking the Coca-Cola code". The Guardian. Retrieved 5 September 2025.
  9. "Feral MBA". Feral MBA. Retrieved 5 September 2025.
  10. "Artists-in-Residence". McColl Center. Retrieved 5 September 2025.
  11. "netarts.org prize 2007". Transmediale archive. Retrieved 5 September 2025.
  12. "Food, Disaster, Culture". FoAM. Retrieved 5 September 2025.
  13. "Radical Administration fellowship with Kate Rich". Hangar. 2024. Retrieved 5 September 2025.
  14. "Welcome to Dr Kate Rich, our first Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow". Alpine Community Economies. 1 October 2024. Retrieved 5 September 2025.

http://www.arnolfini.org.uk/people/rich-kate Archived 2 February 2014 at the Wayback Machine