Christina Rees and Brandon Zech’s top five shows this week come from Galveston, Dallas, Houston, and Amarillo — all via our Five-Minute Tours series.
“For now, just see some art from… here.”
To watch our previous episode of Top Five where Christina Rees and Brandon Zech share tips for shooting Five-Minute Tours, please go here.
1. Five-Minute Tours: Jessica Ninci: Beachcomber at the Galveston Artist Residency.
March 7 – May 9, 2020
Via Galveston Artist Residency: “Beachcomber is an exhibition of new ceramic works by local artist, Jessica Ninci. Having grown up frequenting Galveston and now as a resident, Ninci has a connection and reverence for the island and has been collecting “souvenirs” from its shores for about three decades. Somewhere between scientific study and revery, Ninci carefully recreates objects gathered from Galveston beaches during her most recent combing excursions. Depicting both the natural and artificial – from the skeletal remains of a sand dollar to a knotted nylon rope – these sculptures are set within a backdrop of abstracted dunes covered in native, gulf coast flora – including the Evening Beach Primrose, Cucumber-leaf Sunflower, Dollarweed, Indian Blanket, Camphorweed, and various native grasses. In Beachcomber, Ninci explores the changing coastline, spaces, and objects that belong to both everyone and no-one.”
2. Five-Minute Tours: Allyson Packer at the Hamon Arts Library Hawn Gallery at SMU, Dallas
February 7, 2020 — TBD
Via SMU: “Allyson Packer: Sounding, is a site-specific, interactive installation spanning all four floors of the Hamon Arts Library at SMU. With looping video, text-based instructions, and subtle interventions into the architecture and resources of the library, Packer offers viewers an encounter with the possibility of the infinite.”
“While infinity may only exist as a concept, spaces like libraries, Packer argues, can suggest it. The building itself has clearly defined boundaries, and at any given time the physical and digital materials that make up its collection of resources can be quantified numerically. There is a sense of impalpable depth too contained within The Hamon Library, the sublime potential of what is already known, what could be known, what is not yet known, and what is unknowable. The exhibition’s title, Sounding, describes the process of measuring — originally with lead and line, today with sonar — the depth of a body of water, without making direct physical contact with it. Likening the contents of the library to a body of water, the pieces included in this installation act as sounding instruments to plumb the collection’s literal and metaphorical depths. Water, in many different forms, recurs thematically across the whole exhibition. It appears in direct citation of J.M.W. Turner’s paintings, in reference to a fountain outside of the library, in imagery based on folders containing sheet music from the Hamon stacks, and on the public computer desktops.”
“For several months, Packer visited the library regularly. She spent long afternoons wandering the stacks, getting to know Hamon’s internal and external rhythms and overlooked quirks. This extended visitation with no other purpose allows her to develop an outsider’s peculiar knowledge of the place that’s at once intimate and remote. The resulting interventions into the space deviate only slightly from a patron’s usual experience of the library. Most are subtle to the point of precarity — the term that French art historian, Anna Dezeuze, in Almost nothing: Observations on precarious practices in contemporary art, uses to describe artworks that exist on the verge of disappearing into the fabric of the everyday. By existing on the border between perceptible and imperceptible, Packer’s work redirects viewers’ attention to their own bodies, and their awareness of their presence in a space.” Video Credit: Jesse Fisher
3. Five-Minute Tours: Virginia Lee Montgomery: SKY LOOP at Lawndale Art Center, Houston
January 18 – April 25, 2020
“Inspired by Hurricane Harvey, which devastated Houston and the artist’s childhood neighborhood, SKY LOOP is an ambitious, multi-disciplinary project by Virginia Lee Montgomery. SKY LOOP introduces a new direction for Montgomery in her art, both conceptually and materially, and presents a rigorous and metaphysical analysis of Hurricane Harvey as told through a formal yet subconscious language of Houston-specific symbols. To make the film, Montgomery utilizes a combination of archival footage, footage shot of Hurricane Harvey as she weathered the storm with her mother, and footage shot from her studio and alongside the Buffalo Bayou.”
4. Five- Minute Tours: Vanessa German: In a Fit of Glory at the Amarillo Museum of Art (AMoA)
January 11—April 5, 2020
Via AMoA: “Vanessa German is an American sculptor, painter, writer, activist, performer and poet based in Pittsburgh. As a self-described citizen artist, German explores the power of art and love as a transformative force in the dynamic cultural ecosystem of communities and neighborhoods. Her intricate mixed-media sculptures combine doll parts, antique tins, cowrie shells, household objects, and African beads. With her three-dimensional collages German reclaims objects and words that symbolize the oppression of African Americans for generations, creating serene, if surreal, figures that call to mind religious icons, Congolese minkisi sculpture and folk art traditions. Her work is found in numerous permanent collections.”
5. Five-Minute Tours: ‘Light Waves’ at SP/N Gallery, UT Dallas
March 27-April 25, 2020
Via UTD: “Light Waves features the work of graduate student alumni from the University of Texas at Dallas in a survey exhibition to celebrate the university’s fiftieth anniversary. These artists employ light as one of their creative materials, and continue to influence dialogues in the field through exhibitions, publications, and education. Among those chosen to represent Visual Arts graduate alumni in photography, and related areas such as video and design, are: Mona Kasra, David Witherspoon, Reynaldo Thompson, Giraud Polite, Christi Nielsen, Tim Kolczak, Lupita Murillo Tinnen, Lillian Love Kennedy, Emily Loving, Cynthia Miller, Lilly Albritton, Sheila Cunningham, Eric Baze, Alan Govenar, and Diane Durant.”
“The exhibition was curated by Professor Marilyn Waligore, Director of the Photography program in the School of Arts and Humanities.”
