JOERILEY.WORK





joriley@ucsd.edu
@pleasedontfront
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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.
PUBLICATIONS & PRESS


2026Cartwright, Lisa, Nan Renner, Joe Riley, eds. Oceanographic Art and Science: Navigating the Pacific (Bloomsbury, London: 2025). [forthcoming]
2024Review of King, Richard J.. Ocean Bestiary: Meeting Marine Life from Abalone to Orca to Zooplankton. H-Environment, H-Net Reviews. March, 2024. [PDF
2023“Militarized Seaweeds,” in Holding Sway: Seaweeds and the Politics of Form, a special edition of UCHRI Foundry, eds. Melody Jue and Maya Weeks, Spring 2023. [link
2022“Density Gradient Chemostat for Adapted Laboratory Evolution,” co-inventor with Bowman Lab, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, US Provisional Patent Application, No. 63/344,498, May 2022.
2021“The Enigma of Waves,” in Oceans Rising, ed. Daniela Zyman, Sternberg Press, May 2021.[link]  
2020“The Pencil of Nature: Tracing Intertidal Media through the Development of Early Photography,” in tba: Journal of Art, Media, and Visual Culture, issue #2, University of Western Ontario, December 2020. [PDF

“Ocean Fellowship: The Chain Interview,” eds. Markus Reymann and Daniela Zyman, in Ocean Archive, TBA-21 Academy, 2020. https://ocean-archive.org/view/1464


2019“Wastestreaming.” Urban Omnibus, Architectural League of NY, October 2, 2019. http://urbanomnibus.net/2019/10/wastestream/.

“Country End Near, Country End Far,” in FREE TRADE OR ELSE, ed. Laurie Robins, South London Gallery, May 2019.[PDF
2018“the enigma of...”, artist’s essay in Unbag Magazine, Vol. 2, Winter, 2018. [PDF]

2017“Interview: Future Farmers.” Contemporary Art Stavanger (blog), May 5, 2017. https://www.contemporaryartstavanger.no/interview-future-farmers/.
2014ZAHOPLENNYA Catalog, Izolyatsia Platform for Cultural Initiatives, Kyiv, Ukraine, Summer 2017.https://izolyatsia.org/en/project/zahoplennya.
2013“Parallel Cases: a story,” article and interview with Joe Riley and Audrey Snydey, Boneshaker Magazine, July 2013.

2012“Parallel Cases,” article and interview with Joe Riley and Audrey Snydey, written by Caroline Frayser, Treadlie Magazine, December 2012.

“Parallel Cases,” Joe Riley and Audrey Snyder, letterpress printed artist book, edition of 50.