Kate Rich

{{Short description|Australian artist}} {{Use dmy dates|date=September 2021}} {{Use Australian English|date=August 2011}} {{Infobox artist | honorific_prefix = | name = Kate Rich | honorific_suffix = | image = | image_size = | alt = | caption = | native_name = | native_name_lang = | birth_name =  | birth_date = | birth_place = Australia | baptised =  | death_date = | death_place = | resting_place = | resting_place_coordinates =  | education = | alma_mater = | known_for = {{hlist|Sound|video art|sports art | administration art}} | notable_works = | style = | movement = | spouse = | partner = | children = | parents = | father = | mother = | relatives = | family = | awards =  | elected = | patrons = | memorials = | website =  | module = }}

'''Kate Rich''' is an Australian-born artist and trader based in Bristol, United Kingdom. Her interdisciplinary practice spans media art, social practice, hospitality, and alternative economies. She is a co-founder of the Bureau of Inverse Technology (BIT), an artist-engineer collective known for works shown at the 1997 Whitney Biennial, and the initiator of ''Feral Trade'', a long-running grocery business and economic experiment trading goods through social networks.<ref name="rhizome4">{{cite web |last1=Burrington |first1=Ingrid |date=19 January 2017 |title=The Valley and the Predator |url=https://rhizome.org/editorial/2017/jan/19/bit-plane/ |access-date=5 September 2025 |website=Rhizome}}</ref><ref name="wired-feral4">{{cite news |last=Gibson |first=Owen |date=8 September 2009 |title=Artist runs café on 'feral trade' imports |url=https://www.wired.co.uk/article/feral-trade-cafe |access-date=5 September 2025 |work=Wired}}</ref>

== Career == Rich studied in Australia before moving to the United Kingdom in the 1990s.<ref name="bidoun">{{cite magazine |date=2005 |title=Feral as in Pigeon: Kate Rich and Natascha Sadr |url=https://bidoun.org/articles/feral-as-in-pigeon-kate-rich-and-natascha-sadr |access-date=5 September 2025 |magazine=Bidoun}}</ref> Her work incorporates elements of sound, video, hospitality, and sport art, often exploring the intersection of art and systems of trade or logistics.

== Bureau of Inverse Technology == In the mid-1990s Rich co-founded the [https://www.bureauit.org/ Bureau of Inverse Technology] (BIT) with artist-engineer Natalie Jeremijenko. BIT produced technologically driven works such as ''BIT Plane'' (1997), in which a remote-controlled aircraft equipped with a video camera flew over Silicon Valley, and ''Suicide Box'', a motion-detecting device installed near San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge.<ref>{{cite web |title=BIT Plane |url=https://v2.nl/archive/works/bit-plane |access-date=5 September 2025 |website=V2_Institute for the Unstable Media}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=BIT Plane (1999) |url=https://www.acmi.net.au/works/88295--bit-plane/ |access-date=5 September 2025 |website=Australian Centre for the Moving Image}}</ref> Works by BIT were included in the 1997 Whitney Biennial.<ref>{{cite web |title=Bureau of Inverse Technology |url=https://whitney.org/artists/T3620 |access-date=5 September 2025 |website=Whitney Museum of American Art}}</ref>

== Feral Trade and related projects == In 2003 Rich initiated ''Feral Trade'', a grocery business using personal networks to transport goods such as coffee, olive oil, and chocolate across borders. The project has been described as “willfully wild (as in pigeon) rather than romantically wild (as in wolf).” ''Feral Trade'' has been exhibited internationally, including at Furtherfield in London and the Łódź Art Museum’s *Making Use* exhibition.<ref>{{cite web |title=Feral Trade |url=https://makinguse.artmuseum.pl/en/feral-trade-kate-rich/ |access-date=5 September 2025 |website=Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź}}</ref>

She also co-created ''Cube Cola'' with Kayle Brandon, an open-source cola recipe and laboratory developed at the Cube Microplex in Bristol.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Flint |first=James |date=28 July 2006 |title=The real thing. Or is it? Cracking the Coca-Cola code |url=http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2006/jul/28/foodanddrink.shopping |access-date=5 September 2025 |work=The Guardian}}</ref>

In 2020 she launched the ''Feral MBA'', an alternative business training programme for artists and others seeking to re-imagine enterprise.<ref>{{cite web |title=Feral MBA |url=https://fo.am/the-feral-mba/ |access-date=5 September 2025 |website=Feral MBA}}</ref>

== Residencies and fellowships == Rich was Artist-in-Residence at the McColl Center for Visual Art in Charlotte, North Carolina, in 2002.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Artists-in-Residence |url=https://mccollcenter.org/artists-in-residence/ |access-date=5 September 2025 |website=McColl Center}}</ref> In 2007 she received the Netarts.org Grand Prize from the Machida City Museum of Graphic Arts, Tokyo.<ref>{{cite web |title=netarts.org prize 2007 |url=https://archive.transmediale.de/en/node/10137 |access-date=5 September 2025 |website=Transmediale archive}}</ref> From 2008 to 2012 she collaborated with FoAM on *Food, Disaster, Culture*, a cultural laboratory in European cities.<ref>{{cite web |title=Food, Disaster, Culture |url=https://fo.am/projects/food-disaster-culture/ |access-date=5 September 2025 |website=FoAM}}</ref> In 2024 she became an Administrative Fellow at [https://hangar.org/en/ Hangar], Barcelona,<ref>{{cite web |date=2024 |title=Radical Administration fellowship with Kate Rich |url=https://hangar.org/en/fellowship/espanol-radical-administration-con-kate-rich/ |access-date=5 September 2025 |website=Hangar}}</ref> and in 2024–2027 she holds a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship with Brave New Alps in Italy, researching “radical administration.”<ref>{{cite web |date=1 October 2024 |title=Welcome to Dr Kate Rich, our first Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow |url=https://www.alpinecommunityeconomies.org/2024/10/01/welcome-to-dr-kate-rich-our-first-marie-sklodowska-curie-postdoctoral-fellow/ |access-date=5 September 2025 |website=Alpine Community Economies}}</ref>

== Recognition == Rich’s projects have been discussed in international media and scholarly contexts, including The Guardian, Wired, Rhizome, Bidoun, and academic journals such as [https://unlikely.net.au/ Unlikely] and [https://placesjournal.org/ Places].

== Selected writings ==

* (2024) "None of this experiment is evident" with Femke Snelting, DOI: 10.70934/0yxnhx * (2023) “The Thorny Question of Art and Economy,” in The World We Want: Dystopian & Utopian Impulses in Art Making (Intellect Books), with Nancy Mauro-Flude. University of Chicago Press, {{ISBN|9781835951767}} * (2022) “[https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/9662675/the-feral-mba The Feral MBA]”. Published Doctoral Thesis. * (2020) RADMIN Reader, co-edited with Angela Piccini. {{ISBN|9781527293304}} * (2014) “Feral Trade: taking back markets for people and the planet,” with Katherine Gibson, in Unlikely Journal for Creative Arts. * (2013) "Feral Trade" in Disrupting Business: Art & Activism in Times of Financial Crisis, Tatiana Bazzichelli & Geoff Cox (Eds), Autonomedia

== References == {{Reflist}} http://www.arnolfini.org.uk/people/rich-kate {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140202194221/http://www.arnolfini.org.uk/people/rich-kate |date=2 February 2014 }}

== External links == *[https://rwm.macba.cat/en/podcasts/sonia-436-kate-rich/ Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona: Podcast interview of Kate Rich] *[http://www.bureauit.org/ BIT] *[http://www.feraltrade.org/cgi-bin/courier/courier.pl/ feraltrade.org] *[http://cube-cola.org/ Cube-Cola.org]

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rich, Kate}} Category:Living people Category:Australian contemporary artists Category:Year of birth missing (living people) Category:Australian women artists Category:Artists from Bristol