Ruby Reding

wetenschap & techniek , video , sculptuur , installatie , film , Experimenteel , Ecologie , Dekolonisatie , beeldhouwen , Audiovisueel , Artistiek onderzoek , Archieven

Lees voor

I am an artist based in Rotterdam, working with sculpture, moving image and poetry. My approach combines fieldwork, participatory workshops, writing, conversations with scientists, collecting scrap metal and visits to archives.

Through frictions and connections, I feel out our disconnection from resource supply chains and the ensuing alienation, intimacies and violences caused by calculative infrastructures. Tending to material conditions, my sculptural works draw out the relational dynamics, emotions and affects of scrap materials. My research is informed by feminist and decolonial responses to fieldwork, engaging with different sites and archives with reciprocity, collaboration and listening practices.

**Open studios at Est Nord Est, Canada, 2026** - At Est Nord Est, I presented research on the supply chains of a wind turbine, and a work-in-progress aluminum welded sculpture.

**lustre, De Hillevliet, 2026** - Bauxite undergoes a five step process to become aluminium, where toxic red iron waste is extruded from the metal, making it more lightweight. This sculptural and archive project is a practice in attempting to re-attune to the journey of aluminium, from bauxite to roofing sheet metal, weapons industry and the Celosia plants that grow in red mud. It enquires into how aluminium’s material properties, of excess waste, lightness and highly energy consumptive processes enact the psychic superiority of whiteness. To image the geologists draw to ‘lustre’, the light that emits from minerals, is to see the risk in desire, from marvelling at the shimmer affect of materiality, to the urge to possess, extract, consume.

**lustre (detail), De Hillevliet, 2026**

**soft/shadow metallurgies** - ‘soft/shadow metallurgies’ is an ongoing research project that asks: What forms of speculation, abstraction, and domination coordinate the compulsive attachments to what Kathryn Yusoff terms “white geology”? And what intimacies can be read back through the stages of separation between market and mine from which our geomaterialized fetishes recur? Images in the artworks are from diagrams of industrial aluminium and copper production, scenes from stockbrokers at the London Metal Exchange, fieldwork photographs of aluminium production, and hand gestures taken from archival photographs of labourers of metal industry during WWII. The sculpture aims to think about the history, present and future of metal extraction, suggesting that we should become more aware of where our critical raw materials come from, and the power structures that linger behind them.

**shadow metallurgies** - I presented new film footage for an artistic research talk as part of Post-Extractive Assemblies Lab.

**Workshop: Artistic approaches to aluminium extraction in the Ruhr Valley** - At Bochum University, I lead an interdisciplinary, collaborative workshop mapping the globalised supply chains of aluminium as they relate to the Ruhr region, creating a series of propositions for the future of aluminium waste, energy use and global dependency. We visited an aluminium smelter in Essen and presented our research afterwards including environmental sensors, diagrams and drawings. We positioned the Ruhr region at the centre of a larger transition in the global economy where refining, assembly, and computational robotics are congealing within a single ecosystem. This project asks questions about the role of artistic research for a critical approach to the globalised supply chains and shadow histories of aluminium. The Ruhr Valley including Voerde and Essen are a focal point for developments in EU smelting processes and energy efficiency.

**all this distance (2025)** - 'all this distance' meditates on the frictions and connecting tissues of closeness and distance, machines and humans, conservation and pollution. The film draws out our need for control and order through the predictive infrastructures monitoring our atmospheres, finding the breaks and serendipity that seep through.

**reaching in contrails** - ‘reaching in contrails’ are a series of hanging sculptures composed of scrap aluminium, textiles, steel and resin. The work constitutes an affective and multi-scalar reach from scrap junk yards and the discarded zones of material, to a physical encounter with an arm-like gesture. Composed of tenuous and stable joins such as bolts and textile seams, the sculptures consider different forms of repairing and measuring. With aluminium castings of deep sea and telecommunications cables, borrowed from the Telecom museum in Rotterdam.

**reaching in contrails (detail), 2025**

**leaving the tributary (2024)** - ‘leaving the tributary’ is a film and installation exploring liquidity, intimacy and affect, and the unfurling connotations with time and damp interiors due to the energy/climate crisis and poor housing infrastructure. The film combines footage of the river Wandle in South London alongside a scene in which a lover/friend wakes up in a bed of water inside a dark room. A figure is searching along the river at night and in the daytime, discovering fly-tipped garbage and the mechanical noises of factories including the Wandsworth National Grid.

**‘feeling/folding the tributary’** - ‘feeling/folding the tributary’ is a series of collages created from photographs of local government archives associated with the river Wandle, including pollution and flooding issues, from the 18th Century to the present day. The works also include details from Enclosure Acts, which privatised land in the UK, expelling people from their homes across Croydon in the 19th Century. These archives are woven with stills from recent films and iPhone photographs from the artist’s personal life, including small moments and hiking trips walking through different privatised lands.

**kistéXdrifter (2022)** - “kistéXdrifter was shot in October 2022 in Athens during a residency at Snetha Project Space. The film dives into complex issues of toxicity and biodiversity, initiating an in-situ research at different river locations near Athens, currently in a process of peri-urbanization, creating a hybrid space between a city and a countryside. Her camera follows a protagonist both in the fringes and the center of Athens.” —Curator, Eleni Riga

**P.S. Tracker (2023)** - This sound work features cello by Slow Cooked, a conversation with the artist’s family member, field recordings, Youtube tourist clips and spoken word.

Residency

Datum: 04-07-2026 t/m 29-08-2026

Locatie: Quebec

In samenwerking met: Est Nord Est

At Est Nord Est, I presented research on the supply chains of a wind turbine, and a work-in-progress aluminum welded sculpture. I took thermal footage in Saguenay, an industrial town and site of aluminium industry and hydropower.

https://estnordest.org/en/record/ruby-reding/

lustre

Datum: 09-06-2026 t/m 21-06-2026

Locatie: De Hillevliet,

In samenwerking met: Art at Home

lustre, solo exhibition
aluminium, steel, iron oxide pigment, 3D print, 1940s archival advertisements.

Figuring the oval shape, often seen in emblems or lockets in family heirlooms, ‘lustre’ evokes the possibility of metal as precious, beyond its economic value.

https://rubyreding.com/lustre

Group Residency

Datum: 15-08-2025 t/m 12-09-2025

Locatie: Scottish Sculpture Workshop

In samenwerking met: Scottish Sculpture Workshop

I'm participating in a group residency, focussed on technical skills in metalwork and research on aluminium supply chains.

https://www.ssw.org.uk/

Language(s)

Datum: 06-08-2025 t/m 06-08-2025

Locatie: Garage Rotterdam

In samenwerking met: Sweet Scope Studio

Energy Literacy for a Just Transition

Datum: 04-07-2025 t/m 13-07-2025

Locatie: E-WERK

In samenwerking met: Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis

How can we understand the different ways energy manifests in landscapes, social relations, infrastructures and heritage spaces? This summer school invited 12 students (Masters, Research Masters, PhD) to explore questions and contribute firsthand to the transformation of E-WERK Luckenwalde, a former brown coal power station turned contemporary art space just outside of Berlin.

Heating Systems

Datum: 10-10-2024 t/m 13-10-2024

Locatie: A Tale of A Tub

Exhibition organised between the class of '25 at Piet Zwart Institute and A Tale of A Tub. ‘Higher education is drying up, we’re left with shells and pips, little piles that we are spending time sorting together. We’ve been self-organising in the basement, a gathering in times of prohibition.’

https://a-tub.org/en/events/heating-systems

Deze kunstenaar heeft nog geen toekenningen.