Rachel Hope Allan is an artist and writer from New Zealand currently based in Ōtepoti. She received her Master of Fine Arts with distinction from Dunedin School of Art, where she is Principal Lecturer and Studio Coordinator in Photography. Her work deals with restraint, curiosity and mimicry and has been featured in PhotoForum’s 2020 portfolio review and in Stephen Bull’s 2020 edition of A Companion to Photography. Allan’s interdisciplinary practice employs sculpture, performance, first generation darkroom-based processes, digital and hybridized photography.
Her research investigates the enduring collision between the real and the simulated by re-contextualizing the authentic and replicant while simultaneously subverting and confronting their associated values. She exhibits both locally and internationally; most recently in The 2022 National Contemporary Art Award, at Waikato Museum, NZ (2022), Postcards from Europe at Cambridge University, UK (2022), Gift, at Ashburton Art Gallery, NZ (2022) and Not Just Another Shinjuku Love Hotel, at RDS Gallery, Dunedin, NZ (2022). In 2017, her solo show CRASH had its international debut with Wallplay in New York, NY. Also, in 2017, two of her photographs that had been previously exhibited at The Dunedin Public Art Gallery were selected to be part of Anything Could Happen at The Yu Gallery, Shanghai (2017).
Allan’s artist-books have been collected by The National Gallery of Australia, The Museum of New Zealand, The Auckland City Library, Auckland University, Massey University, Victoria University, University of Canterbury, University of Otago’s, Hocken Collection, The National Library of New Zealand, and Reminders Photography Stronghold, Tokyo, Japan.
Artist, Researcher, Educator
All work by Rachel Hope Allan is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 New Zealand License. Based on all work at rachelhopeallan.com
rachel hope allan 