October Issue 1999
Artist <- -> Audience: Understanding Contemporary Art at Green Hill Center for NC Art
The Green Hill Center for NC Art in Greensboro, NC, will be hosting Artist <- -> Audience: Understanding Contemporary Art through November 7. Participating artists include Ann Gregory-Bepler (Durham, NC), Tammy Rae Carland (Durham, NC), Susan Holland (Greensboro, NC), Laura Ames Riley (Chapel Hill, NC), Brad Thomas (Charlotte, NC), elin o'Hara slavick (Chapel Hill, NC) and David Solow (Rougemont, NC).
The artists in Artist <- -> Audience have in common a desire to reach out to their audience in an effort to create a dialogue. Each artist extends his or her work - and message - into the daily experience of the audience. The pieces in this exhibition invite you to be a part of the art. Aesthetic, political, and philosophical issues are explored with the intent of asking viewers to re-evaluate some element of their lives.
The seven artists in this exhibition provide similar but unique approaches for reaching and involving their audiences. All share the vision from which this exhibition was created . . . the desire to create a dialogue through which the viewer can experience and become a part of the art. Nat Trotman, writer of the catalogue essay for the exhibition (exhibition catalogue is available at Green Hill) provides us with a historical perspective as well as insight for interpreting the individual artists' works. Trotman describes common ways artists introduce their works into our day-to-day existence whether it is a "melding"of work for public interaction and daily experience, portraying ordinary life in established forms of representation, or creating "installations" acting as environments. The artists in Artist <- -> Audience reach the audience in all of these ways, he explains.
Tammy Rae Carland's Keeping House series, photographs capture the mundane moments in the life of a female couple. The artist creates a type of "psychological frame" and through icons, humor, and staged irony, invites the viewer to consider their preconceptions of family and household.
The Story of Modern Art by Brad Thomas utilizes video as the medium to give us a "tale" and installation humorous and simple on one level, but rich in symbolism. An oversized old-fashioned school desk sits in front of a television screen. Viewers / audience become children anticipating a lesson. The video's reference to The Story of Modern Art by Sheldon Cheney works within the physical framework to create a model for the social relationship between artist and audience, says Trotman. He concludes that Thomas' work . . . "asks its viewers where their values and ideals were produced and whether they trust the source."
Ann Gregory-Bepler, Susan Holland, Laura Ames Riley, and David Solow each have created full room installations for the audience to enter. The artists have carefully considered details and metaphor in bringing about understanding and their message to the audience.
Bepler's Petit Cosmology, is a . . . "wonderland of curiosities, a playground for misplaced childhood," says Trotman. Its physical structure is formed by a parachute stretched over a metal frame. Bepler's curious and unusual suspended objects inside the fort-like structure create an atmosphere of imagination and symbolism. Trotman refers to the piece as a symbol of suspension and . . . "a model for the experience of the viewer who is suspended between two realities - daily life and the artistic experience."
Riley's installation focuses on the broad issue of nature / technology and society's relationship with technology. The alluring environment created through the installation provides an ambiance of a lush swamp or jungle. Interspersed among sprawling vines however, are TV monitors. These screens display a calm, rhythmic and somewhat hypnotic procession of eggs - beautiful and solemn, but captive to assembly in a processing plant.
Trotman states that the most "ritualistic" piece in the exhibition is David Solow's ex voto plumbum/history/ attached to my heels. The latter part of the title comes from a poem by David Wojnarowicz and deals with feelings of dissociation . . . from ones' life and body. In Solow's installation, "ritual" may take the form of procedures for the audience to follow as they enter, along with the imagery and various icons. A bisected tub with a projection of the artist underwater is surrounded by walls of plate lead, creating an environment that is both questionable and . . . dangerous (?) one may ask. Adding to this sensual space, the artist has placed beeswax casts of various body parts over mounted lights. The audience is invited to experience smells and rituals, maneuver within . . . to question and experience.
Ritual is also a key element Susan Holland's Baptism of the Dead. Holland's installation, rather than prompt unanswered questions, conveys a message both political and personal. Although very intuitive in nature, the basic form of the installation, is that of a funeral ceremony. Trotman describes her use of imagery and "conscious raising" effect saying, "Holland seeks to tell the truth about her life as a woman living under a patriarchal system of fundamentalism."
elin o'Hara slavick brings the audience into her work by making it public. The November Third Memorial Bus Stop, designed in the form of a bus shelter commemorates the victims of the Greensboro Massacre of 1979 in which five anti-Klan protesters were shot and killed by Klan and Nazi Party members. Trotman states, "Like the protesters in the shelter's lit image, slavick is rallying for the simple acknowledgment of a human tragedy that would otherwise be passed over by the sweeping eye of history. By bringing art into something so mundane as a bus stop, The November Third Memorial Bus Stop honors and educates the people of Greensboro." City and Community leaders have shown strong support for construction of slavick's piece outside the newly renovated Transit Depot in downtown Greensboro. The artist displays with her exhibit plans and models for the shelter and notebook of her information on the Massacre.
Jenny Moore, director of Green Hill refers to each of the works as "welcoming gestures," an offer for the audience . . . "to be a part of the art - to be moved, to feel deeply and passionately what the artist felt, and in doing so to recognize our common humanity." So, be willing to be a bit vulnerable, let down your guard, and accept the gift - the experience that the artist is offering you.
For further information check our NC Institutional Gallery listing or call the center at 336/333-7460.
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