Rebecca Moss is an artist based in Essex and East London.
Her work humorously explores notions of absurdity and precarity, and takes a variety of forms across video, sculpture, performance, installation, and participatory practice. She is especially interested in exploring slapstick performance from a feminist perspective: for its emotional expression of feelings of instability, its lowbrow humorous associations, its sense of reciprocity between body and surroundings, and for its potential to challenge power.
In an ongoing series of videos, she stages absurd interventions in the Essex landscape, which she performs to the camera. These works emphasise site-responsive interactions between the human gesture, elemental forces, architecture and the natural world. She sets up scenarios where she relinquishes a degree of control, and the outcome is often surprising. She is especially inspired by Dada, Psychogeography, Situationism and Romantic Conceptualism. She is also inspired by the working-class culture of Essex, where she grew up, performing with everyday household objects and costumes from local fancy dress shops, and embracing an improvisational approach rooted in everyday experience.
Her participatory work uses humour as a point of connection across diverse groups. She is especially driven to work with, and amplify the perspectives of, groups from lower socioeconomic backgrounds and marginalised areas, who may not ordinarily experience artistic activity.