JOERILEY.WORK





joriley@ucsd.edu
@pleasedontfront
linktr.ee/joeriley
mailing list

Photo: Natalie Conn

 Joe Riley is an artist, historian, and Ph.D. candidate at UC San Diego Visual Arts in a joint environmental research program with Scripps Institution of Oceanography’s Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation. 

  Joe’s research has recently been supported by the Getty Scholars Program, a UCSD Rita L. Atkinson Fellowship, and the UC Humanities Research Institute. His dissertation, Fixing the Sea: Case Studies Toward A Critical Environmental History of Ocean Art and Science since 1970, foregrounds and critically examines histories and practices of interaction between artists, oceanographers, and marine life situated within California’s university-military-research complex.

  From 2020–2025 Joe has been a participating artist and co-curator for the Pacific Standard Time exhibition Embodied Pacific, featuring projects by thirty artists working with researchers in laboratories, field sites, and archives in Southern California and the Pacific Islands. 

  Previously, he was an Ocean Fellow with TBA21-Academy and participated in the Whitney Independent Study Program. Joe holds a BFA from The Cooper Union School of Art and has taught at UC San Diego, Cal State San Marcos, Stevens Institute of Technology, and The Cooper Union.


ARE YOU RECEIVING ME?
2017
wood, grain, radio, post
Sharjah Biennial 13
collaboration w/ Futurefarmers

ARE YOU RECEIVING ME? (2017) is a linear display of 24 postcards that evoke a horizon line. The cards were the result of a project in which one message per hour, throughout an entire day, was sent via radio from Seed Journey to anthropologist Michael Taussig at his home in Brooklyn, US. A system of postcards was used to confirm reception of each message sent by artist Amy Franceschini. Adopting QSL Card vernacular used in the early days of radio broadcasting, each card included original watercolour by the artist and remarks by the anthropologist.

For SB13, Futurefarmers assemble as Amy Franceschini, Pieter Heremans, Martin Lundberg, Joe Riley, Audrey Snyder, Michael Swaine, Michael Taussig and Marthe Van Dessel. 

This project was part of Sharjah Biennial 13.