Contemporary Gallery
Student juried exhibitions on view Feb. 28 to March 4 at Center for Art & Theatre
Juried 2022 and Form & Content are annual juried exhibitions of student work. The exhibitions will be on view from Feb. 28 to March 4 at the Center for Art & Theatre’s Contemporary and University Galleries.
Juried 2022 features work created by Betty Foy Sanders Department of Art undergraduate students in a variety of media including drawing, painting, fibers, jewelry, multimedia, mixed media, photography, printmaking, sculpture, and ceramics.
The Form & Content exhibition features work created in art foundation courses including drawing, two-dimensional design, three-dimensional design, and digital foundations.
Both exhibitions were juried by Savannah-based artist Will Penny. Penny received a diploma in Fine Art from Fanshawe College in London, Ontario, and a BFA and MFA in Painting from The Savannah College of Art and Design. Penny’s artworks dissolve traditional boundaries of art and design. His art explores tensions between the tangible space a painting inhabits, the impact of digital technology on fabricated forms and illusionistic environments.
Winners will be awarded during the reception on Friday, March 4. Light refreshments will be served.
Night Vision brings 1980s party vibe to Georgia Southern’s Contemporary Gallery
Chicago-based artist Claire Ashley’s large-scale inflatable paintings/sculptures combine humor, acidic color, and pop culture references in rebellion to art world tradition.
STATESBORO, Ga. – Inspired by Grace Jones’ iconic 1981 album “Nightclubbing,” Chicago-based artist Claire Ashley’s “Night Vision” uses humor, acidic color and absurd pop culture references to create large-scale inflatable painting/sculpture-hybrid work that rejects longstanding art world traditions. The exhibition will be presented at Georgia Southern University’s Contemporary Gallery at the Center for Art and Theatre from Feb. 15 – March 17. A lecture and reception will be Feb. 15. The Artist Talk will begin at 5 p.m. in Art Building, room 2071, with the reception to follow immediately after, from 6 – 7:30 p.m. at the Center for Art & Theatre.
“I wanted to bring Claire’s work here because it’s got a good combination of being challenging, while at the same time being fun and engaging. Art that poses big questions like what is art? or why is this art? Can sometimes be dull or stuffy, but Ashley’s work is anything but,” said Gallery Director Jason Hoelscher. “The notion of a painting as an inflatable surface (rather than a flat plane) is an interesting one from a theoretical point of view, but is also just plain fun to engage: who doesn’t feel a bit like a kid again when surrounded by big, weird, inflatable objects?”
Ashley’s work is deeply feminist, and is particularly invested in exploding the structural possibilities of abstract painting, expanding kinetic possibilities for monumental sculpture and enlivening the dialogue around contemporary art by utilizing a deliberately egalitarian collection of humorous and formal entry points for multiple communities to engage with her work. “Night Vision” will transform the gallery into a nightclub-like setting using projections and internally lit inflating/deflating “breathing” painted sculptures.
“Claire Ashley’s work combines large scale–often considered, or at least intended to be read as, a sign of big, serious art–with a sense of fun and engaged interaction. The objects are painterly in ways that light up an art critic’s brain with interesting questions and problems, while also lighting up the pleasure or fun center of the brain. Much fun art is shallow, much ‘deep’ art isn’t necessarily fun or viscerally interesting, but Ashley’s work manages to bridge these divides,” said Hoelscher. “For that matter, as more and more of our cultural objects dissolve into the immateriality of screen space, there’s a real, visceral pleasure in being around objects and tangible things. With Ashley’s work the fun becomes serious, the serious becomes fun, and the two combine to pose important questions about, and challenges to, what we have come to expect from art experiences in this second decade of the 21st century.”
All events are free and the public is invited to attend. Read more…
Opening reception for Lew Alquist exhibition Friday, Sept. 30
The Georgia Southern University Betty Foy Sanders Department of Art will present work by the late sculptor Lew Alquist from Sept. 28 – Oct. 28 in the Contemporary and University Galleries at the Center for Art and Theatre.
Alquist incorporated found objects, kinetic energy, sound and scent into his work—provoking the senses to make the invisible more visible. His work primarily examines similarities, parallels, overlaps, and adjacencies between technological development and human evolution, but it also points to issues of political and industrial corruption as relevant today as when the work was created, in the 1970s-1990s.
“Discovering Alquist’s work has been a great surprise, like discovering a rich, dense novel that reveals crucial things you didn’t know you needed to know about,” said Gallery Director Jason Hoelscher. “Not as well-known as he should have been, Lew seems to have been something of an artist’s artist, known mainly to the cognoscenti. His work manages to touch on important political events of the time, while also offering intriguingly idiosyncratic (and often hilarious) new viewpoints from which to consider the art world of his era, ranging from postminimal materiality to art-as-technology and technology-as-art. With this exhibition we really hope to introduce Lew’s work to a larger, contemporary audience—not only is the work itself top-notch and provocative, but his statement that ‘Not everything is art, but everything is art supplies’ deserves to be right up there in the pantheon with any other profound phrase about art’s inherent potentials.”
A presentation on Alquist’s work will be given during an Artist Talk on Friday, Sept. 30 at 5 p.m. in Visual Art Building, Room 2071. A reception will follow from 6 to 7:30 p.m. in the Center for Art & Theatre. All events are free and open to the public.
Alquist’s wife Jane Pleak, who taught ceramics at Georgia Southern for nearly 30 years, curated the exhibition.
In honor of Alquist, Pleak started a memorial fund to help the BFSDoArt bring visiting artists to the University to enhance student learning through workshops and lectures. To contribute, go to GeorgiaSouthern.edu/Art and choose “Make A Gift” from the right sidebar. Designate your gift by selecting “other” and typing “3694 Lewis Alquist Visiting Artist Fund” in the processing instructions.
NOTE: This exhibition was originally set to open on Monday, Sept. 26 but will now be opening Wednesday, Sept. 28. The Reception and Lecture dates remain unchanged. We apologize for any inconvenience.
Allison Tierney’s ‘The Things We Keep’ opens in Contemporary Gallery
Georgia Southern University’s Betty Foy Sanders Department of Art presents Allison Tierney’s The Things We Keep, from Feb. 23 to March 25 on-campus in the Contemporary Gallery of the Center for Art & Theatre. The exhibition includes an artist talk Feb. 23 at 5 p.m. in Visual Arts Building, room 2071 with a reception to follow at the Center for Art & Theatre. The events are free, and the public is welcome.
Tierney’s paintings employ found materials and non-traditional applications of paint to question structure, material integrity, consumerism, D-I-Y, and the throwaway culture. The works speak to content of domesticity, waste, time, landscape, and femininity.
“Since the majority of my materials are found, they come with their own histories, forms, and physical qualities. I exploit this material baggage to see how far painting can be pushed,” Tierney writes.
Tierney’s honest use of materials and abstracted brushwork allow the objects used in her work to exist where they are—self-referential, notating their original purpose. The work explores the spatial capacities of painting beginning with the surface. Items embedded within the canvas or sitting flush to the surface become part of the narrative. The work also examines space through what is happening around the canvas or off the wall. This includes indirect effects of the work such as shadows and lighting, but also can involve an extension of the picture plane or free-standing sculptures.
As perspective shifts begin to occur, the viewer has an opportunity to interact with the work in a variety of ways and can interpret their connections with the materials, creating limitless personal narratives.
“Tierney’s work is impressive in and of itself, but becomes even more so once you realize just how many of the art world’s big issues she’s addressing all at once. Among others, these include abstract painting’s century-long exploration of geometry; the role of the art object and its co-extensive existence in and among the embodied space of the viewer; and even questions of how to embed an object’s history and aura into the creation of an artwork,” notes Gallery Director Jason Hoelscher. “These are big questions one at a time, so Tierney’s attempt to tackle them simultaneously is pretty impressive. Add the fact that the work is exciting to look at, with or without pondering these big questions, and the result is a must-see exhibition.”
Tierney’s project is made possible by an Ella Fountain Pratt Emerging Artists Grant from the Durham Arts Council with support from the North Carolina Arts Council, a division of the Department of Cultural Resources.
Tierney is an artist living and working in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. She received her B.F.A. from Winthrop University and her M.F.A. from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill where she won the Top Prize for Outstanding M.F.A. work.