Palingenesis

Solo exhibition by Wolverhampton-based artist Rachel Magdeburg, exploring transformation, painting and the unexpected connections between non-human life, everyday objects and the materials of painting itself.

Rachel Magdeburg is an artist and writer whose practice explores painting's material, historical and conceptual possibilities.

Developed through observation, experimentation and association, Palingenesis, meaning rebirth or regeneration, presents a new body of work in which forms from the natural world become starting points for an exploration of how images emerge and transform through the process of making. Drawing on different experiences, such as finding a worm in a packed lunch and drawn to its segmented form and restless movement, Magdeburg traces connections between organisms, objects and painterly gestures. A network of visual associations emerges in her paintings: worms resemble rat tails, rat fur recalls paintbrush hairs, finger brushstrokes echo smears across a mobile phone screen.

Throughout the exhibition, motifs including worms, snails, rats, fossils and grass evolve and reappear in unexpected ways, generating connections between seemingly unrelated things. Some forms remain recognisable, while others fragment into gestural marks, glitch-like abstractions and sculptural objects. Combining traditional painting techniques with exploratory processes such as casting paint in found plastic packaging and working on synthetic paper, Magdeburg tests the boundaries of painting and image-making. The exhibition also reflects Magdeburg's longstanding interest in ecology and the Anthropocene, the idea that human activity has become a major force shaping the natural world. Throughout Palingenesis, Magdeburg explores the relationships between organic forms, manufactured objects and the materials of painting itself, such as mobile phones embedded in paint to evoke fossils, or the technofossils of a future age. Bringing together paintings, sculptural paint casts and moving-image work, Palingenesis reveals painting as a process of continual transformation, where images, materials and ideas evolve and reappear in new forms.

Rachel Magdeburg is an artist and writer based in Wolverhampton. Magdeburg has worked in a range of media in the past, but has a particular focus on the histories, theories and practices of painting, both past and present. Over the last decade, Magdeburg's practice has explored imagery from the natural world, the role and questionable authenticity of the artist's hand and gesture, and visualities and iconography within the genre of European still life painting and natural history illustration, as both are embroiled in the beauty and peril of representing and objectifying nonhuman subjects. Magdeburg paints in a conventional manner in two-dimensions, often working from life, but also adopts an expanded approach to painting using non-traditional media as substrates and alternative paints. Magdeburg has participated in numerous artist residencies and exhibitions across the UK, and published academic writing, exhibition reviews, and creative non-fiction.

She received a PhD studentship from the University of Wolverhampton to research the concept of the Anthropocene and its relationship to painting.

Magdeburg is a Lecturer in Fine Art (Painting) at Manchester Metropolitan University, and freelance writer for Corridor8 for the West Midlands. Image credit: Rachel Magdeburg, Wisp Slit, 2026, courtesy the artist