Rhea Myers

"Hi! I’m Rhea, pronounced “REE-ah” (pronouns she/her). I was born in the UK in the 1970s. In the 1990s I went to art school at Canterbury College of Art and Middlesex University’s Centre for Electronic Art. After that I worked in tech and raised a family while continuing to make and write about art. Then in 2013 I married an awesome Canadian and we now live in British Columbia, Canada.

I make art to understand the world around me, which since 2014 has meant making art about the blockchain. As a reflection of and an alternative to post-2008-financial-crash society, and as a reflection of the centuries-old cryptographic imaginary in Western political thought that 1990s cypherpunks are only the latest expression of, the blockchain is a uniquely resonant subject and medium for artmaking. I started by crafting raw transactions to model intangible forms before moving on to smart contracts and then NFTs that create ironised forms of property and control. Along the way I focussed increasingly on the anxiety of ownership that blockchain property embodies, and the pairing of absolute identity with absolute secrecy that it infused with due to its cryptographic foundations.

During my residency I’m excited to be sharing some of the art that has influenced me, some of my pre-blockchain art, and sneak previews of my upcoming projects (including my forthcoming book -  https://www.urbanomic.com/book/proof-of-work/ )."