This editorial served to position submissions to a special issue of the Journal of Contemporary Painting devoted to Carol Rhodes (1959-2018). This special issue published the proceedings of 'Carol Rhodes: Seen and Unseen', a day long symposium held at The Glasgow School of Art in April 2024, which sought to identify new positions through which Rhodes's practice might be approached. Key to the formulation of these new approaches was a consideration of the artist's involvement with activism and political organising in the 1980s and early 1990s, her avowed interest in science fiction, the infrastructural realities she depicted, and insights into her working method provided by an archive of working materials.