Rita McBride lives and works between Dusseldorf, Germany, and Los Angeles, USA. She studied at Bard College, New York, and later obtained her MFA from the California Institute of the Arts. Since 2003 she has been a professor at the Kunstakademie, Düsseldorf, where she has been the Director since 2013.
2016 Biennial Year Find out more
For Liverpool Biennial 2016 McBride created a large-scale light installation in Toxteth Reservoir that acts as a portal between real and fictional worlds.
Inside the cavernous Toxteth Reservoir, laser light beams cross and stretch from one end to the other, flickering in the dark. Rita McBride’s large-scale installation ‘Portal’ is a passageway comprised of exotic matter that does not follow the known laws of physics, it bends time and space and allows instantaneous travel to the far reaches of the unknown. The ‘Portal’ is a tunnel through space-time that creates an escape from the present and past to an alternative future.
“I’ve always loved the efficiency of wormholes and the possibility of time travel.” – Rita McBride
Elsewhere, McBride’s Perfiles depict the outline of houses in Pompeii, a city in the South of Italy that was buried in metres of ash and pumice after the volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79AD. Sculptural memories of buildings consumed by time, the Perfiles are distributed across the exhibition.
McBride’s work has been the subject of numerous solo museum exhibitions, the most recent of which were held at Museo Tamayo, Mexico City, Mexico (2013) and the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, USA (2014-15). Currently, The Kestnergesellschaft in Hanover, Germany (2015) and the Kunsthalle, Düsseldorf, Germany are collaborating on a solo exhibition and publication that will be on view through Spring 2016.
Rita McBride at Liverpool Biennial 2016
Portal, 2016
16x 1W/520nm KVANT semiconductor diode laser module
Commissioned by Liverpool Biennial
Exhibited at Toxteth Reservoir
Perfiles: Fortuna Virilis, 2010, Sansovino, 2010, Aqueduct of Adrian, 2010, Pantheon 1, 2010, Sminthius, 2010, Treatro Marcello, 2010
Bronze and marble
Exhibited at Cains Brewery
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Rita McBride, Mae West, 2011. Photo courtesy of Alexander and Bonin -
Rita McBride, Arena, 2002. Irwell Sculpture Trail, Salford, UK. Photo courtesy of Konrad Fischer Gallerie
Encounters at Bury Art Museum & Sculpture Centre
Featuring interactive sculptures, film and immersive soundscapes, Encounters brings together works by leading international artists presented at Liverpool Biennial 2016 to Bury Art Museum & Sculpture Centre in Greater Manchester. Mark Leckey’s Dream English Kid 1964 – 1999 AD is the artist’s attempt to retrace the significant events of his life through archival footage on the internet. In the Sculpture Centre, visitors can discover sculptural and sound ‘portals’ by Céline Condorelli, an artwork by Audrey Cottin waiting to be activated through collaboration, and Rita McBride’s sculptural memories of buildings consumed by time. Encounters is on view until 9 September 2017.
Part of the Liverpool Biennial touring programme, which brings artworks by international artists presents at the 2016 Biennial to six art organisations in the North of England.
Film by Carl Davies, FACT Video Production Services