Letter from the Curator:
Time is tricky because it cannot be ignored. No matter how much we deny and look away from the problems facing our global environment, time never fails to catch up with us. Whether its the few years humans have left to prevent irreversible ecological damage, or the matter of hours it takes for a wild fire or hurricane to cause total devastation, time is unavoidable in our struggles to save this planet. In Matter of Time, we hope to capture this feeling of urgency with the following works by artists around the globe, each affected in their own ways by the perils of the planet. From the many submissions we received, we were also able to combine anxiety and fear with hints of appreciation, nostalgia, and in a few cases, irony. We hope you come away with a similar mix of feelings after diving into this show, and remember that the clock is always ticking..
Welcome to Matter of Time.
-S
Introducing New Grounds!
The Vacant Museum is thrilled to introduce New Grounds Collective, our friends based in Brighton, U.K! Matter of Time features a special section dedicated to this fantastic group and the artists involved, be sure to take a close look at their work! Here’s what New Grounds is all about:
Formed in 2016 as a collaboration between partners Idil Bozkurt and Joshua Redfearn, New Grounds was born out of a desire to see more participation from a demographic of post graduate artists in UK arts festivals. Josh and Idil have put on a number of independent shows across a wide range of venues in their city whose content varied from photographic image, illustration, painting, sound art and live performances of poetry to music and academic inquiry.
“As New Grounds creators we devote ourselves to supporting and encouraging
emerging artists who are at the beginning of their career to test their
ideas, make new work and to grow their practice. After a university education
or a self-taught journey, these early years of experiences are a very important time to embolden ones proactivity
so that creativity can flourish.As in the meaning of our name, New Grounds is
an emergence, a curious exploration and discovery, the contradiction of the
‘new’.”
New Grounds is a project to support independent artists, and aims to provide a dynamic platform for creative individuals and to celebrate and vitalise their talents to be discovered by a wider audience.
Check out what they’ve been up to: https://www.instagram.com/_newgrounds_/?hl=en
Does your art collective want to be featured as a special guest in our next show? contact us here or email vacant@vacantmuseum.com!
Jennifer Cabral
Lawrenceville, NJ
MINE_IRA
http://www.piercecabraleditions.com
“This work is about a mountain and my childhood in Minas Gerais, Brazil. Drawn from memory the mountain ridge of Serra do Curral Del Rey became a revealing layer – from negative to positive – bringing into light the hidden secrets of the mountain and that of my body. This series of photographs called MINE_IRA is a discourse on the environmental impact of the mining industry in the state of Minas Gerais in Brazil. This work draws from my family’s archives using 35mm color negatives from my childhood. The word “mine” is inserted over each image and used interchangeably between “mine” as a noun, and a pronoun. Both symbolize that which is taken without permission.
Once defined as a mine the terrain is subjugated to desecration and exploitation. No better symbol to such acts than “Serra do Curral Del Rey” – a mountain ridge that framed the city of Belo Horizonte where I was raised but has been carved out by the mining industry. I traced it’s slopes from memory, as I’ve seen it through my child-eyes. The drawn ridge is now a revealing layer – from negative to positive – bringing into light the hidden secrets of the mountain and of my body. We were both being corrupted, pillaged and abused. We sustained devastation and loss while keeping our facades intact.
Once defined as a mine the terrain is subjugated to desecration and exploitation. No better symbol to such acts than “Serra do Curral Del Rey” – a mountain ridge that framed the city of Belo Horizonte where I was raised but has been carved out by the mining industry. I traced it’s slopes from memory, as I’ve seen it through my child-eyes. The drawn ridge is now a revealing layer – from negative to positive – bringing into light the hidden secrets of the mountain and of my body. We were both being corrupted, pillaged and abused. We sustained devastation and loss while keeping our facades intact.
Of the mountain only remains a shell. I hope to prevent humans from such un-souling. A reclaiming of the body can take place, if the word “mine” is self-proclaimed. In this instance, sovereignty is restored and can no longer be taken away. Not without blunt infringement, violation and betrayal. Something the mountain knows too well.
This leads to the last bilingual word-play embedded in the type-setting of the tittle of this work. I’m a so-called “mineira” – someone from the state of Minas Gerais. But this romantic view of my origins. This idealized upbringing In a society rooted In the mining culture means only one thing: i am a witness and an accomplice to multiple environmental crimes. “Mine_ira” can now only be written this way. Not as mere finger-pointing full of rage against The mine and the men behind it, but as self-responsibility for my own silence and inaction – as “mea-culpa. By relinquishing victimhood and accepting my role as perpetrator and spectator I am now in a position to unleash “mine-rage” and call for The well overdue criminalization of the mining industry. You are criminals. We all are.”
Chelsea
San Ramon, CA
Suicide
“When I decided to tackle another vertical landscape and challenge myself with it’s canvas size, I wasn’t sure which paradise to choose. My foundation of nature tended to be tropical or forest-like with vibrant evergreen. Instead, inspired by tragedy instead of hope for future improvement, I sought to create the smoke-ridden earthy aftermath of the Amazon fire, an environment in pain instead of thriving. From gesture to form, ashes to ashes, I pray the Amazon heals and won’t suffer any longer. In this piece, the key is environmental awareness others can see and reflect on due to the scorched skin darkness of the environment I have chosen to represent with acrylics. Acting like a body part of the Earth, we are our own caretakers and our own methods of ‘suicide’.”
Amy Fleming
Tallahassee, FL
Landscape With Figure
http://www.amyflemingstudio.com
“We live in an age of hyperconsumerism, where everything is discarded once it has been deemed to be devalued. Devaluation comes from damage, from age, from simply not being new anymore. This mindset applies to humans and human relationships as well. People are regarded as disposable, their humanity and labor devalued. We need to understand that people, animals, and our environment are not expendable.”
Amy Fleming
Tallahassee, FL
Shopping Mall
http://www.amyflemingstudio.com
“The mountains of things we throw away are much greater than the things we use. In this, if in no other way, we can see the wild and reckless exuberance of our production, and waste seems to be the index” – John Steinbeck
New Grounds:
Idil Bozkurt, New Grounds
Brighton, U.K
PRODUCTIVITY
https://idilbozkurt.wixsite.com/idilbozkurt / @bozkurtidl
“This video piece investigates the idea of Productivity within the post-capitalist systems through a metaphor of represented imagery combined with an interview with Jacques Derrida who talks about the idea of deconstruction. Within the significance of the video, PRODUCTIVITY generates diverse meanings. Associations and meanings collide as space becomes time and language becomes image.
This piece poses a question on the Productivity in the age of environmental disasters and intends to look to the ‘system’ from a perspective to understand the structural unity of particular imagery and audio.
What does it mean to be productive in the age of climate crisis?”
Marguerite Minnot Thomas, New Grounds
Brighton, U.K
1964
“He sapped the tree for knowledge
Only to mourn its fallen weight on his shoulders
The Forest, once dense and lush
Now stands barren, its emptiness softly echoing on
7th August 1964: Donald Currey cuts down the oldest living tree on earth to analyse its age.”
Molly Astley, New Grounds
Brighton, U.K
Untitled
@mollyastley
“My work explores the relationship between the body and the environment.
I am deeply inspired by the intricacies of connections within our biosphere, between seasons, elements, organisms, and less tangible, subtle energies.
I am all too aware that the delicate balance of these relationships is threatened and altered by human activity, therefore in my paintings I aim to depict the fluidity, ephemerality and responsiveness of organic matter, as something to be treasured and viewed as sentient and alive.
This painting “Within” explores tentacular inter-organism relationships, and the fragility and tension of the strings that hold us together. In my life, I look to external nature for metaphors to guide me and to make sense of my internal world. Though I create my paintings through an imaginative, automatic process, they often loosely describe the natural forms that exist around us. The uncomfortable question here is, what will happen when we loose the environmental diversity that teaches and helps us to understand ourselves on such a profound and spiritual level? “
CLICK HERE TO WATCH
Annie Elliott, New Grounds
Brighton, UK
‘The Voice of (Tree) Reason’, 2019
https://vimeo.com/akce / @discoprincess1 / @annieonfilm
“Have you ever wondered what it was like to be a tree? Scientists now know how trees connect and interact with each other and absorb CO2, converting it into oxygen helping humans to breathe. Trees are not competitive, coexisting ‘nutrient exchange and helping neighbours in times of need’ (The Hidden Life of Trees, author Peter Wohlleben, January 2016). How can we compare this with our own systems of work ethics, care and social structures. My work looks at these issues through the ‘voices’ of an Elder Tree, a Worker Tree, a Tree Stump and a Young Tree. Giving trees a voice is important because at this moment in time, we are losing the rainforest at the fastest rate ever. Deforestation and upturning Indigenous communities has been the result of logging, industrial agriculture and farming for mass consumption. We need to understand how important trees are in order to protect them, ourselves and our world. But there is hope and empowerment in gaining knowledge and understanding about the systemic changes that need to shift. I want to address these feelings in modern society, connecting on a level that is humorous and silly to help digest the issue of Climate Emergency.”
Eva Louisa Jonas, New Grounds
Brighton, U.K
Boy from That Thing Over There that surrounds and sustains us
https://evalouisajonas.com/ / @evalouisaj
“Boy speaks to our inner child about maintaining a fierce curiosity about the natural world. Taken from a series of work titled That Thing Over There that surrounds and sustains us, which traces the human condition to attempt to render the inaccessible (flora, fauna and climate) accessible, creating far flung spaces beyond their own local geography. This expression of the exotic is seductive but beyond this lies a cultural and historical web of destruction of the natural world, as a result of human exploration and expansion. When nature is presented as an exhibit in such spaces, it dictates our experience of it. In the image the child wanders through thick foliage, overwhelmed at every turn by the fauna surrounding him. Environmental catastrophe in all its forms is paralysing, incredibly complex and destructive. Such urgency required to amend the damage and displacement of the natural world will only be fully realized by turning inward, into the child within us all, a child that dreads lightly and remains inquisitive”
Joshua Dylan Redfearn, New Grounds
Brighton, U.K.
Animals in Retrograde
https://cargocollective.com/joshuadylanredfearn / @josh_redfearn
“Battersea Power Station is a decommissioned coal-fired power station based in the Borough of Wandsworth, London. It was designed by Giles Gilbert Scott and its construction was completed in 1945 and was operational from 1941 until its closure in 1983. In its heyday it contributed 1/5th of the UK’s total power generation and consumed 1,000,000 tons of coal per year. Now, after 30 years standing on the side of the river Thames in ruins, the famous building is receiving a 9 billion pound renovation and redevelopment as inner city gentrification looks to transform the riverside borough into a white collar commercial hub. Battersea Power Station is an imposing monument within the landscape that stands as a stark reminder of our industrial past and our ongoing relationship with the consumption of fossil fuels. What does it mean to renovate such a building in a time of economic austerity, of environmental collapse and disaster? ‘Animals in Retrograde’ may seem to be an on the nose reference to Pink Floyd’s ‘Animals’, itself a reference to George Orwell’s book ‘Animal Farm’ but ‘Animals in Retrograde’ is an invitation to consider Floyd’s assertion of the building as a symbol of the oppressive nature of industrial capitalism. What does it signify when billions of pounds are spent to preserve and commodify such an iconoclastic part of London’s visual and architectural heritage, even when said building is also a symbol of environmental degradation?”
Rebeca Gutierrez Fickling, New Grounds
Originally from Spain but live in Brooklyn, New York
Polyethylene Alchemy
https://www.rebecagutierrez.net/ / @rebegutiz
“As metaphors to a plasticised world, these photograms act as a reaction to the extreme amounts of plastics found in the natural world. Polyethylene Alchemy explores the theme of the Anthropocene as a tool to use the arts to raise awareness about human impact on the environment. Scientists believe we have entered a geological time-period where our ecosystems have irreversibly been altered by human activity. Buried under ever-increasing plastics which may never decompose, this work responds to the harrowing idea that this manmade material has become a permanent feature, shifting the landscapes of our planet indefinitely. The work is composed of unique photograms made in the darkroom, placing plastic bags directly onto light sensitive paper to recreate the landscapes that are being polluted and destroyed by plastic. I chose to work with photograms as the fragility of each print parallels the frail state of our planet due to human activity.”
Brittany Alexander
New York City
“The Problem Is You Think You Have Time”
@mightybri
“This drawing is a representation of how we constantly plan for the future and the next deadline even though we are not guaranteed tomorrow. Like the hare, humans are prone from jumping to one task to the other in a kind of rudimentary cycle, without giving much thought to why we do what we do. I wanted to illustrate how fragile life is and let it be a reminder that life is a gift, and every moment should be cherished.”
Matt LaPierre
Gorham Maine USA
Untitled
@lostcivilization11
“BNW photograph of a woman holding out a dead bird. It is relevant regarding the passing of time is the fact that the bird has died. It is picture of mourning and providing a memorial to a life that has passed.”
Jackie Partridge
Ontario, Canada
Patched
http://www.jackiepartridge.com / @jackiepartridge_
“Patched is an ongoing series of photographs where map paper (made from maps of places I have been to) is embedded into trees where the bark naturally peels away as an act of offering or mending.”
Michael Kwan
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Untitled selection from “Artifice”
https://michaelkwan.myportfolio.com/ / https://www.instagram.com/michaelkwan.tif/
“Artifice explores issues of sustainability through an approach that observes the paradoxical relationship between humankind and plant-life. While many corporations choose to ignore the reality of our planet’s changing climate, and continue to contribute to it, many species of plants are no longer able to exist in nature without direct human intervention. As a result, facilities have been constructed to preserve these plant species by creating artificial environments intended to harbor plant-life. These spaces are sealed off from the outside world and equipped to mimic the ideal environment in which these species are able to survive and thrive. While these spaces are successful in their preservation of the plants, how these plants interact with and exist in these artificial environments becomes an increasingly unsettling reality of the future coming forward .”
Emily Bright
Toronto,Ontario, Canada
“Plastic Paradise”
Mixed Media (chalk pastel/paint markers), 25”x31” Framed
http://www.emilybrightart.com / @emilybrightart
“This piece was created in response to Bill Nye’s (The Science Guy) YouTube video “The Earth Is On #%*#& Fire!”
Link: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IFgBFYkBZ6E.
It is a commentary on the global obsession with single-use plastics, and how they contribute to a the earth’s climate crisis. The subject in the piece is wearing science safety goggles and a raincoat potentially awaiting treacherous weather or a natural disaster. Yet the rubber ducky alludes to the enjoyment and entertainment we get from items made from plastics at the earth’s expense. The chemical structure for polystyrene is written on the ducky.”