Rhea Storr was born to a British mother and Bahamian father in Leeds, England in 1991; her work addresses the representation of Black and mixed-race cultures, often drawing on her own upbringing and British Bahamian heritage. Currently undertaking a PhD entitled 'Towards a Black British Aesthetic: How is Black Radical Imagination realised through 16mm filmmaking practices?', Storr is a Co-Director of Not, Nowhere, a London based artists’ film co-operative and is a resident of Somerset House Studios. She was the winner of the Louis Le Prince Experimental Film Prize (2018) and of the Aesthetica Art Prize in 2020.
Artist and filmmaker Rhea Storr was born in Leeds, England in 1991 to a British mother and Bahamian father. She graduated with a BFA from the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, University of Oxford in 2013 and in 2017 completed an MA in Contemporary Art Practice from the Royal College of Art. She is currently undertaking a CHASE funded, practice-based PhD at Goldsmiths College, London, the working title of which is 'Towards a Black British Aesthetic: How is Black Radical Imagination realised through 16mm filmmaking practices?'. Storr’s practice encompasses moving image, drawing and writing and explores the representation of Black and mixed-race cultures. Masquerade as a site of protest or subversion is an ongoing theme in her work. So too, is the effect of place or space on cultural representation. On occasion she draws on her own upbringing and British Bahamian heritage. With an interest in the in-between, the culturally ineffable, translation, format and aesthetics, she is concerned with performance and costume. In particular she has employed carnival as a means to articulate a complex relationship between Britain and the Caribbean that underlines the importance of location. Often working with 16mm photochemical film, Storr ‘considers that analogue film might be useful to Black artists, both in the aesthetics it creates and the production models it facilitates’ (Rhea Storr website). Perhaps her best-known work, Junkanoo Talk (2017) was selected by the Whitechapel Gallery as part of the Artists’ Film International Project (2020). In Storr’s own words, ‘Junkanoo is a celebration in the Bahamas, akin to a carnival. I wanted to convey the difficulty of communicating the unique customs of Junkanoo in the UK. It’s not like Notting Hill Carnival. So Junkanoo Talk thinks about the politics of the in-between and who has the right to represent whom’ (Rhea Storr, Artist Q&A: Rhea Storr, 21 May 2020, Whitechapel Gallery website). By way of elaboration she states that, ‘As part of the Bahamian diaspora, I have experienced the carnival only through mediated imagery, through first hand accounts, the internet and television. Colour is coded in a way which suggests an internal logic, the layering on of a costume comparative to the layering on of a language’ (Rhea Storr, Junkanoo Talk, 2017, Royal College of Art website).
More recent work includes A Protest, A Celebration, A Mixed Message (2018) the subject of which is the Leeds West Indian Carnival, and which poses the question as to who is really performing. Following Mama Dread’s, a troupe whose carnival theme is Caribbean immigration to the UK, the viewer is asked to consider the visibility of black bodies, particularly in rural spaces’ (Home website). Bragging Rights (2019) ‘explores the spaces and social hierarchies of [the Bahamian] Junkanoo. An insight into the drive behind the year-long costume production which culminates in the Boxing Day and New Year’s Day parades every year’ (Home website). Storr’s work has been shown in exhibitions/screenings including: Saatchi New Sensations (2013); Berwick Film and Media Arts Festival (2017); Visions in the Nunnery, Nunnery Gallery (2018); Leeds International Film Festival (2018); Get Up Stand Up Now: Generations of Black Creative Pioneers, Somerset House (2019); London and Artist Film International, Whitechapel Gallery (2020); Glasgow Film Festival (2020) and An Infinity of Traces, Lisson Gallery (2021). In 2018 she was the recipient of a Jerwood Visual Arts Bursary and was the winner of the Louis Le Prince Experimental Film Prize. In 2019 she undertook an Autumn Residency at Hospitalfield, a centre dedicated to contemporary art in Arbroath, Scotland, and won the Best Artist Film at the Aesthetica Short Film Festival. In 2020 she was awarded the Aesthetica Art Prize and worked as a programmer for the Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival, an annual event which takes place in the Scottish Borders town of Hawick. Storr is a Co-Director of Not Nowhere, an artists’ film co-operative based in London, where she runs the 16mm film lab and teaches workshops. She is a resident of Somerset House Studios. Rhea Storr lives and works in London, England. Her work is held in the LUX Collection in the UK.