Joe Riley

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Joe Riley is an artist and historian pursuing a PhD in Art History, Theory and Criticism (Art Practice Concentration) and the Program for Interdisciplinary Environmental Research (PIER) at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego. His writing, grounded in archival research and fieldwork, focuses on the hydro-politics of knowledge, inclusion, and documentation in the ocean sciences, the commodification of ocean life forms such as kelp, the design and engineering of seacraft, and histories of maritime social practices.

Joe’s dissertation, Fixing the Sea: Case Studies Toward A Critical Environmental History of Ocean Art and Science since 1970, delves into histories of interaction between artists and oceanographers in late-20th and early 21st-century environmental art. Mobilizing evidence from research spanning the studio, laboratory, and archives, the project argues for a critical oceanic turn led by interdisciplinary networks situated in Southern California. This development is tracked through ecocritical case studies of Helen and Newton Harrison’s The Second Lagoon: Sea Grant (1974), Allan Sekula’s late-career engagement with capitalism’s oceanic fix and marine environmental traumas, and a participatory ethnographic account of seaweed research conducted by artists and scientists in relation to intersecting histories of how we model and understand colonization, racial capitalism, and globalization. The project contributes a unique revision of standard narratives of ecological art by embedding its inquiry in art practice and environmental science methods.

Since 2019, Joe has been a participating artist and co-curator for a PST ART: Art and Science Collide partnership between UC San Diego Visual Arts and Birch Aquarium. On view in 2024-2025, the PST ART exhibition Embodied Pacific features projects by thirty artists working with researchers in laboratories, field sites, and archives in Southern California and the Pacific Islands. The project invites immersive engagement in oceanography, Indigenous design, and critical craft through exhibitions, workshops, and programs at six interrelated venues. Alongside marine ecologist Danielle McHaskell and artist Audrey Snyder, Joe is engaged in a “co-laboratory,” Passengers of Change, that references the transportation of seaweed biota in contemporary cargo ship ballast tanks and speculatively re-thinks the laboratory work ethic through the re-design of the research bench. Ballast Bench (2024)—a rocking chair ecosystem in which rest and contemplation generate growth—is part of the Embodied Pacific exhibition on view at the Birch Aquarium at Scripps Institution of Oceanography through September 2025.

As an artist, Joe designs and builds large-scale sculptural installations that reverse-engineer vessels and instruments such as cars and boats and infrastructures such as railroads and maritime shipping networks. His collaborative work with Audrey and the collective Futurefarmers has been exhibited at venues including The Bowtie Project (Los Angeles), Socrates Sculpture Park (New York), Artes Mundi 7, and Sharjah Biennale 13.

Joe is a graduate student fellow with the UC Humanities Research Institute and the Wildland-Urban Interface Climate Action Network (WUICAN) at UC Irvine. A Kenneth & Dorothy Hill Fellowship (2023-24) and a Getty Library Research Grant (2022) have also recently supported his research. In 2021-22, Joe was a Fellow of the Institute for Practical Ethics at UC San Diego, researching the hydro-ethics of race and gender and the problem of documentation in oceanography, focusing on the career of ichthyologist Anita Smith Hall (1911-1999). Previously, he was an Ocean Fellow with TBA21-Academy’s Ocean Space in Venice, Italy (2020), a participant in the Whitney Independent Study Program (2016-17), Art & Law Program (2018), and the Interdisciplinary Art & Theory Program (2018-19). A student organizer with Free Cooper Union, Joe holds a BFA from Cooper Union (2013) and has taught at UC San Diego, CalState San Marcos, Cooper Union School of Art, Stevens Institute of Technology, and Bruce High Quality Foundation University.