Rachel Prince (they/them), also known as Rat Prince, is a Leeds-based curator, producer and artist. Rat embraces admin and organisation as a key part of their practice, at times enlisting the help of a character named Office Sue. They plan and create live art exhibitions, performance events, and regular art markets.
In their exhibitions, different art forms combine into one experimental show, where boundaries between individual works are not clear cut, and performers move across installations. These shows are immersive experiences, thought of as being like ghost trains, only less scary. The viewer moves around the space to find new spectacles in each corner. Patterns and similarities that can be identified between works are important, but so is strangeness and ambiguity. Rat conceptualises these shows, but they are created through collaboration between fine artists, drag performers, dancers, and musicians.
Rat is a performance artist who maintains a writing practice and an improvised dance practice, moving as a strange and seductive creature. Their background is in creating performances that are site-specific actions (and sometimes journeys) - not on stage, public but unannounced (or at least not announced as performances), cryptic, conceptual and defiant. These performances were originally made in protest against the University of Oxford where Rat completed their BFA, either calling for the redistribution of wealth or protesting the gross behaviour of a tutor which was not taken seriously by the university. Conceptual performance and political protest still underpins their curatorial practice. Queerness and the fight for trans rights is often referenced in their work, as well as motivating their organising of regular trans solidarity art markets (@artburnmarket). Creating paid, collaborative opportunities for other artists, outside of a studio space, is important to their practice, and they are working towards a goal of running and programming an art space in the future.
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS AND PUBLICATIONS
• The Big Love Book, part of The Big Love Show, Hyde Park Book Club, Leeds, 2026 (published poem)
• Cheque, Wharf Chambers, Leeds, 2025 (curator, producer and performer)
• CLAYground, Centre for Live Art Yorkshire, Leeds, 2024 (collaborative peformance with Meg Erridge)
• Let Us See You, Aire Place Studios, Leeds, 2024 (print)
• Resonate Bodies, Fusion Arts, Oxford, 2023 (collaborative performance with Meg Erridge)
• Ruskin 2023, Ruskin School of Art, 2023 (degree show)
• The Art of Noises VIII, Modern Art Oxford, 2023 (performance)
• Spilt Milk, Fusion Arts, Oxford, 2023 (curator)
• Another Night at St John’s College, The Dolphin Gallery, St John’s College, Oxford, 2022 (solo)
• Spilt Milk, St John’s College, Oxford, 2022 (co-curator)