The Help, A Companion Guide

"The Help, A Companion Guide" by artist Rachel Harrison is based on images surrounding Harrison's 2012 solo show at Greene Naftali Gallery entitled "The Help." The exhibition shares its title with her photograph of the back door maintenance entrance to Duchamp’s "Étant donnés," which is visible in the exhibition galleries of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and alludes to the entangled roles of the Artist, the Muse, and the Help. "The Help, A Companion Guide" showcases visual and conceptual elements that Harrison used in the making of "The Help": from early Google image searches and reference materials, to documentation of the installation process and its attendant "help," to selected details of the final sculptural works. Harrison creates visual and temporal rhymes that playfully link her finished sculptural works to a constellation of materials and services that express the immanent sociality at stake in every work of art. This is Harrison's first e-book.


Rachel Harrison was born in 1966 in New York City where she currently lives and works. Harrison has had solo exhibitions in international institutions and galleries including The Help, Greene Naftali Gallery, New York (2012); Consider the Lobster, Whitechapel Gallery, London, Portikus, Frankfurt Am Main, and the Hessel Museum at CCS Bard College (2009 – 2010); Sunny Side Up, Meyer Kainer Gallery, Vienna (2008 –2009); Lay of the Land, Le Consortium Dijon (2008); Voyage of the Beagle, Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich (2007); Checking the Tires, Not To Mention the Marble Nude, Galerie Christian Nagel, Cologne (2006); Car Stereo Parkway, Transmission Gallery, Glasgow (2005); Posh Floored as Ali G Tackles Becks, Camden Art Centre, London (2004); and Current 30: Rachel Harrison, Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee (2002). Selected group shows include That’s the way we do it, Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria; Notations/Everyday Disturbances, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia; The Original Copy: Photography of Sculpture, 1839 to Today, Museum of Modern Art, New York (2010); Abstract Resistance, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2010); Making Worlds, the 53rd Venice Biennale (2009); Altermodern: Tate Triennial, Tate Britain, London (2009); Front Room: Dieter Roth and Rachel Harrison, Baltimore Museum of Art (2008); Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2008, 2002) ;Unmonumental: Falling To Pieces in the 21st Century, New Museum, New York (2007).