Rachel Kneebone

Rachel Kneebone (born 1973) is an English artist who lives and works in London. She was shortlisted for the inaugural MaxMara Art Prize for Women in 2005. That year, she contributed work to a show, The Way We Work, at the Camden Arts Centre, London.

In 2005, she was commissioned to do a wall sculpture Reviewer Katarina Horrox commented that Kneebone's "carefully crafted sculptures witness various organic forms merging ambiguously into human body-parts as they climb elegantly up walls. Suggestive yet sensitive, her creations harp back to Ovid's Metamorphoses, whilst their fixed immobility implies a transgression of time and motion." at Project Space 176 in London's Chalk Farm area.

In 2008, Kneebone began to be represented by Jay Jopling and the White Cube gallery in London. Her first solo show with White Cube, The Descent, was in February 2009.

In 2008, Tracey Emin selected a work by Kneebone to include in her room at the Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition. Emin said: "Her work is exciting for me – porcelain figurines, vulnerable and with an eighteenth-century look. I like Georgian things – my house was built in 1729, and I like simplicity and straight lines." of organic forms merging ambiguously into human body parts. Her work has been described as depicting an "erotic state of flux" and "celebrating forms of transgression, beauty and seduction", and said to be influenced by ancient Greek and Roman myths in Ovid's poem Metamorphoses

Kneebone's Raft of Medusa installation is an example of the white porcelain sculptures depicting a tumultuous confusion of limbs and shapes. The series of five porcelain sculptures were displayed in The Foundling Museum from 29 September 2017 to 7 January 2018. They expressed the Foundling Hospital's suppressed narrative of sexual desire, emotional damage and female strength, creating a resonant component to the Museum's exhibition, Basic Instincts.

In January 2009, Kneebone spoke to the Tate Etc. magazine about William Blake's work The Primaeval Giants Sunk in the Soil (1824–1827), from Illustrations to Dante's Divine Comedy, "Eighth Circle of Hell".

A 2012 exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, Rachel Kneebone: Regarding Rodin, showcased eight of her original works next to fifteen from Auguste Rodin that Kneebone personally selected. The pairing brought to light themes of "sexuality, death, and sin."

From 2017 through 2019 the Victoria and Albert Museum displayed Kneebone's sculpture 399 Days, a 5-metre-high porcelain tower.

Collections Goss Michael Foundation (George Michael ) Roberts Institute of Art