November 2011

Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art in Winston-Salem, NC, Features Two New Exhibitions

The Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art in Winston-Salem, NC, will present two new exhibits including: Lilly McElroy, on view from Nov. 3 through Jan. 29, 2012, and Out of Fashion, on view from Nov. 3, through Mar. 4, 2012. Both exhibitions were organized by SECCA, and curated by Steven Matijcio.

Lilly McElroy is a young, Arizona-born artist who playfully, but poignantly moves between poles of aggression and intimacy. Drawing upon Western clichés, autobiography and the rituals of urban life, she stages public performances that confront the many tangled dimensions of human interaction. In this context, her ongoing photo series I Throw Myself at Men (2006-) turns a pathetic romantic euphemism into a platform for the artist to literally pitch herself at males while documenting the moment of contact. McElroy’s exhibition at SECCA will combine photographic and video documentation of performances from the past three years – creating a conflicted, yet ultimately sincere self-portrait.

The word “fashion” is synonymous with trends, fads, immediacy and a fleeting exercise of life in the moment. Yet in the very ebb and flow of fashion’s passing fancy, an accumulation of lives, stories and materials collects into an ambivalent history. The eclipse of a once-thriving textile industry in North Carolina speaks to the volatility of market-driven fashion/s, spurring new, regenerative practices from mountains to the coast. Rather than keeping up with the latest fashions (and their continuing demands of consumerism, turnover and excess) there is a movement amongst local artists and designers that turns instead to refuge, time and duration. Their work derives out of fashion, but is outside fashion’s perpetual amnesia. Beyond the runway, this exhibition mines the histories of fashion as vessels of time, nature, and memory.

The Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (SECCA) is an affiliate of the North Carolina Museum of Art, a division of the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources, the state agency with the mission to enrich lives and communities, and the vision to harness the state’s cultural resources to build North Carolina’s social, cultural and economic future. Information on Cultural Resources is available 24/7 at (www.ncculture.com). Beverly Eaves Perdue, Governor; Linda A. Carlisle, Secretary; Mark Richard Leach, Executive Director. SECCA is a funded partner of The Arts Council of Winston-Salem and Forsyth County. Additional funding is provided by the James G. Hanes Memorial Fund.

For further information check our NC Institutional Gallery listings, call the Center at 336/725-1904 or visit (www.secca.org).

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