Issue 38: Spectacle 

At the End of Each Day, I’m Sometimes Tired

Roberta Rich

Roberta Rich

Roberta Rich  is an emerging artist based in Melbourne whose work responds to constructions of ‘race’ and gender identity, sometimes with satire and humour in her video, performance, installation and multi-disciplinary projects. Drawing from historical, socio-political, media and popular culture, Rich engages with notions of ‘authenticity’; and its relationship to constructed identities and their forms of representation. In doing so, Rich aims to deconstruct colonial modalities through arts practice while ascertaining empowering forms of self determination, often referencing her own diasporic African identity and experiences.

Since completing her Master of Fine Arts at Monash University (2013), Rich has exhibited projects in Melbourne, as well as interstate, and has been more recently working across Johannesburg and Cape Town. Recent shows include, I’m Cornered; FELTspace, Adelaide (2015), Deny/Denial/Denied; Bubblegum Club, Johannesburg (2016) and Blak Dot Gallery, Melbourne (2017), One Colour at a Time: Contemporary Screen Prints; Wits Art Museum, Johannesburg (2017), Capturing State; Klein Karoo Nasionale Kunstefees, Western Cape (2017), Transcendence; Firstdraft, Sydney (2018), M/other Land as part of Next Wave Festival at Arts House (2018), Transmissions; Gallery MOMO Cape Town, (2018), Coloured™; Greatmore Studios, Cape Town (2018), The Fairest Cape? An account of a Coloured; Bus Projects (2018) and is an alumni of Footscray Community Art Centre’s Emerging Cultural Leaders Program. Rich’s recent residencies in South Africa were supported by NAVA’s Freedman Foundation Travelling Scholarship for Emerging Artists.