The Heseltine Gallery presents Rachael Coward – Something Lost, Something Found

The Heseltine Gallery presents Rachael Coward – Something Lost, Something Found

The Heseltine Gallery at Truro School is proud to present artist Rachael Coward . The exhibition will be taking place Saturday 6th September – Sunday 5th October 2025, Saturdays and Sundays 10am – 3pm. (Not including Saturday 20th September).

Rachael was born and grew up in Somerset. After completing a foundation diploma in art and design, she went on to graduate with a BA in Fine Art from Falmouth University in 2017 and has been in love with Cornwall ever since. After a few years of working in the arts and heritage sector in the South West and South East she finally came back to Cornwall in 2020. and is living in the Carnon Valley.

The Something Lost / Something Found series combines sculpture with her favourite processes which involves moving from 2D to 3D and then back again, stretching and compressing forms until they reach an outcome that somehow sits across both dimensions.

Her work has featured in Michells’ Engine House, Newlyn Art Gallery and The Royal Cornwall Museum, and an upcoming show at the Exeter Phoenix Gallery 333 is scheduled for this summer.

Rachael has said “I am Truro School’s artist in residence and part-time art technician. I specialise in printmaking, and I teach a weekly printmaking class for students. My residency allows me to use the school’s facilities to make her own work, whilst showing students how a professional artist can work.

When I am not at the school or making my own work, I work for several arts organisations as art educator and facilitator, frequently working with young people and families. I have recently worked with The National Trust, Tate, and the South West Heritage Trust. I am also a former Co-Director of CAMP, a member-led network for the creative and visual arts community in Devon and Cornwall.

Inspirations I work across installation, printmaking and book works, and my interests lie in heritage, language, thresholds and place. I create environments and interventions that extend and alter a space’s intended uses, drawing on discrepancies uncovered and inventing possibilities for its future.

Place, and more specifically rurality is at the heart of my work. I use my practice to explore my sense of identity as a woman living and working in rural Cornwall. I have been creating monuments to my lived experience based on thresholds and markers I have been finding in everyday settings and extracting them, placing them into new contexts and transforming them. Duality is also a key theme in my work, and I enjoy exploring the grey area that sits in, around and between opposing forces; full/empty, internal/external, presence/absence, analogue/digital.”

Rachael share that her work is process-driven, meaning that she won’t often know the outcome of a piece of work until it is being made. She is inspired from what she sees around her. She then uses this as a starting point to play with materials and processes until something clicks and go from there.

“Being in residence at the school has meant that for the first time I am trying out ceramics to make sculptural works. At the moment a lot of the work I am making consists of lots of modular parts which can have multiple ways of being shown. I will play with how each piece interacts with another until it fits the space it’s being shown in.”

“The Heseltine Gallery is a beautiful space, and I am really looking forward to making the most of its ample light and high ceilings. As the school’s artist in residence, I believe that it is important to be able to share my work with both the school community whilst also opening a dialogue between the school and wider communities in Cornwall. I am also looking forward to working with the 6th form students in their lessons. Together they will help to curate a selection of works from the Heseltine Gallery collection to sit alongside my work.”

We look forward to welcoming Rachael to the Heseltine Gallery.