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Sergei Isupov and Kadri Pärnamets in Small Favors 2024 at The Clay Studio, Philadelphia, PA

Sergei Isupov and Kadri Pärnamets in Small Favors 2024 at The Clay Studio, Philadelphia, PA

The 50th anniversary edition of Small Favors presents almost 500 small artworks displayed in 4-inch cubes. In the exhibition you will find big ideas, individuality, and material awareness. Some artists were invited, while others were selected from an applicant pool of over 1,000. To celebrate that this truly is an exhibition for everyone, the call was extended to artists using other media to create their art, including wood, metal, glass, fiber, paper, and paint. The majority of the works are examples of small ceramic artworks that range from tiny mugs to intricate sculptures. 

Artists represented in Small Favors range from the most established ceramic artists in the field, to young artists and students new to the material. Small Favors engages artists’ creativity in new and exciting ways with the challenge of making art on a very small scale. Some create works in their usual style, but at a reduced scale. Others use it as an opportunity to experiment and break away from what they create in their daily studio practice. 

This range of artists allows us to present works in a broad price range, from $35 to $4,500. We hope that this empowers people to become collectors, as well as helping established collectors continue to support artists.

More on the Exhibition HERE

More on Sergei Isupov HERE

More on Kadri Pärnamets HERE

Small Favors 2024


At The Clay Studio | Philadelphia, PA | April 11 – June 2, 2024

Posted by Isabel Twanmo in Artist News, Events, Exhibition, News
Shinnecock artist Courtney M. Leonard explores a connection made with a right whale held in the scientific collection at UMass Amherst | The Berkshire Eagle

Shinnecock artist Courtney M. Leonard explores a connection made with a right whale held in the scientific collection at UMass Amherst | The Berkshire Eagle

Shinnecock artist Courtney M. Leonard explores a connection made with a right whale held in the scientific collection at UMass Amherst

The Berkshire Eagle 

By Jennifer Huberdeau

AMHERST — A single whalebone sits perched atop two black poles in the middle of “Courtney M. Leonard: Breach: Logbook 24 | Staccato,” in the University Museum of Contemporary Art at UMass Amherst.

A frothy, bubbling patch in the middle of the rib bone marks the spot where it fractured and healed. The healed bone is evidence that this female North American right whale, Staccato, had survived being hit by a shipping vessel. Years later, another, similar collision would fracture her mandible, cause internal bleeding and days later, end her life.

Staccato’s body would wash up on the shore of Cape Cod in 1999, her bones later making their way to the Natural History Collections of the University of Massachusetts Amherst. It is there, in a barn, that indigenous artist Courtney M. Leonard, a member of the Shinnecock Nation in New York, would come to know this once-grand mammal and learn her story.

More about Courtney M. Leonard HERE

View Courtney M. Leonard BREACH: Logbook 24 | STACCATO  HERE

Posted by Isabel Twanmo in Artist News, News
ARTIST NEWS | COURTNEY M. LEONARD

ARTIST NEWS | COURTNEY M. LEONARD

COURTNEY M. LEONARD
on view in New York & Massachusetts

Courtney M. Leonard, The New Transcendence, Gif

Courtney Leonard, “BREACH: Logbook 24 | TRANSCENDENCE”, 2024, Installation at Friedman Benda, New York, NY, Courtesy of Friedman Benda and Courtney M. Leonard. Timothy Doyon Photography

COURTNEY M. LEONARD IN MUSEUMS & GALLERIES

Our first introduction to Courtney M. Leonard in 2020 was BREACH: Logbook 20|NEBULOUS, a large scale multimedia installation commissioned by the Hood Museum, Hanover, NH. In 2021 we invited her to participate in MELTING POINT, an exhibition of work in ceramics and glass co-curated by Ferrin Contemporary and Heller Gallery.

Leonard’s work in that exhibition and others, represented a metaphor of climate change. These works based in deep, scientific research, garnered public recognition, museum acquisitions and invitations to create new, site responsive works throughout the country. In 2023, a mid-career survey solo exhibition  Courtney M. Leonard: Logbook 2004–2023 at the Heckscher Museum was held in collaboration with a site specific outdoor sculpture, BREACH: Logbook 23 | ROOT, now on long term view at Planting Fields. These opportunities brought her from her studio in Minnesota back to Long Island, close to home and her community in Shinnecock, NY.

With each installation and exhibition, Leonard draws on knowledge, experience and her personal Indigenous perspective. These works are composed and presented in interdisciplinary media that use metaphor and abstraction to illustrate consequences of social policies from historic to present. Color, form and multiple object compositions allude to land, water and the cultural landscape in the regions where she engaged in collaborations.

In 2024, Leonard’s recent work is being featured in exhibitions opening at galleries and museums in New York and Massachusetts. In addition, works in numerous permanent public collections of American art are on view throughout the US. Read more in today’s newsletter to learn more and follow links to preview exhibitions, press and recorded videos.

Leslie Ferrin, director, Ferrin Contemporary

THE NEW TRANSCENDENCE
curated by Glenn Adamson

Group Exhibition
Exhibition including work by 6 designers: Ini Archibong, Andrea Branzi, Stephen Burks, Najla El Zein, Courtney M. Leonard, and Samuel Ross. 

Friedman Benda
New York, NY
on view through February 24, 2024

Press
Glenn Adamson and Friedman Benda examine spirituality in contemporary design, Wallpaper Mag, January 16, 2024

Curator Essay
Essay for The New Transcendence By Glenn Adamson

Courtney M. Leonard, “BREACH: Logbook 24 | TRANSCENDENCE, 2024, installation at Friedman Benda, New York, NY, Timothy Doyon Photography

ON VIEW & UPCOMING

COURTNEY M. LEONARD

Featured In
RIVERS FLOW / ARTISTS CONNECT
American artists from the 1820s to the present day explore and illuminate our profound, symbiotic relationship with significant waterways, such as the Hudson River, the Susquehanna, and the Missouri, as well as symbolic representations. Group exhibition also featuring works by Paul Scott & Jason Walker.

Hudson River Museum
Yonkers, NY
on view February 2, 2024 – September 1, 2024

Courtney M. Leonard,  BREACH: Logbook 21 | CONVOKE | SUBSISTENCE Blue Dawn Study, detail

BREACH: Logbook 24 | STACCATO

Solo Exhibition
University Museum of Contemporary Art
on view February 14 – December 9, 2024

Opening Reception
Wednesday, February 21, 5:00 -7:00pm

UMass Fine Arts Center
Amherst, MA

BREACH: Logbook 24| SCRIMSHAW

Group Exhibition
New Bedford Whaling Museum
New Bedford, MA
on view June 13 – November 3, 2024

Conversation with Artist Courtney M. Leonard
October 4, 5:00-7:00pm

Courtney M. Leonard, “BREACH: Logbook 23 | BREACH #2”, 2022

ART AND DESIGN: 1900 TO NOW

Group Exhibition
Drawing together works on paper, costume and textiles, painting, sculpture, photography, and decorative arts and design, the installation reflects the interconnectedness of the disciplines RISD teaches and the cross pollination among art forms and media that can influence how artists work.

RISD Museum
Providence, RI
on view through June 9, 2024

Installation view of Courtney M. Leonard, BREACH: Logbook 21 | NEBULOUS at RISD Museum

EBB/FLOW

Group Exhibition
Addressing the violence of separation, the practice of keeping memories and the invasive effects of colonialism, Pritika Chowdhry, Chotsani Elaine Dean and Courtney M. Leonard contemplate the past, the present and possible futures in their large scale, ceramic-based installation works.

BREACH interview with Eileen Bass

Weisman Art Museum
University of Minnesota
Minneapolis, MN
on view through May 31, 2025

Courtney M. Leonard, Breach Logbook 22: Cull (detail), installation view, 2022, Weisman Art Museum commission.

ON THIS GROUND: BEING AND BELONGING IN AMERICA

Group Exhibition
Bringing two extraordinary collections of Native American and American art together for the first time in our institution’s history, this long-term installation celebrates artistic achievements across time, space, and worldviews.

Peabody Essex Museum
Salem, MA
ongoing

Courtney Leonard, ABUNDANCE (Red Algae) and ABUNDANCE (Red Foam), 2016, in “On this Ground: Being and Belonging in America” on view at the Peabody Essex Museum. Photo by Kathy Tarantola/PEM

RECENT PUBLICATIONS

COURTNEY M. LEONARD: LOGBOOK 2004–2023
 

The Heckscher Museum of Art and Planting Fields Foundation have jointly published the first book about nationally recognized artist Courtney M. Leonard (Shinnecock, b. 1980). It represents both the retrospective exhibition COURTNEY M. LEONARD: Logbook 2004-2023 on view at The Heckscher Museum, and her site-specific installation at Planting Fields, BREACH: Logbook 2023|Root. The pages are filled with insights into Leonard’s sources of inspiration, creative processes, and original interpretations.

$25 + shipping
45 pages, softcover

ARTIST NEWS

Ferrin Contemporary’s newsletters connect artists, collectors, art professionals and the media with exhibitions and opportunities to learn more about artist practices, works on view and new work taking place in the studios.

FERRIN CONTEMPORARY
now located at ProjectArt at 54 Main Street in Cummington, MAOpen by appointment Winter – Spring.
Contact us to arrange a visit in person or by zoom
info@ferrincontemporary.com

 

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54 Main Street

Cummington, MA 01026

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Copyright Š 2023 , Ferrin Contemporary, All rights reserved.
Posted by Isabel Twanmo in Artist News
MUSEUM NEWS | HEY! Ceramique.s – Paris, France | Chris Antemann, Crystal Morey, Mara Superior

MUSEUM NEWS | HEY! Ceramique.s – Paris, France | Chris Antemann, Crystal Morey, Mara Superior

HEY! CÉRAMIQUE.S
Paris, France

HEY! CÉRAMIQUE.S
MusÊe de la Halle Saint Pierre | Paris, France
on view through August 14, 2024

In this newsletter we introduce you to our colleague in France, Anne Richard, founder, author & curator of HEY! Modern Art & Pop Culture. In 2023, she invited 30 international ceramic sculptors to HEY! CÉRAMIQUE.S  her latest and current exhibition on view in Paris at La Halle Saint Pierre Museum. A specialist known for discovering new genres, graphic art and pop surrealists, Anne was inspired to curate exhibitions that highlight figural sculpture in ceramic media.

Two ambitious 2022 exhibitions Anne curated introduced internationally known sculptors from Ferrin Contemporary. HEY! LE DESSIN featured recent works by Sergei Isupov and Jason Walker in Paris and the exhibition  Esprits Libres at La Fondation d’Enterprise Bernardaud in Limoges featured new works by Crystal Morey and Mara Superior. The three artists featured in HEY! CÉRAMIQUE.S  are Chris Antemann, Crystal Morey, and Mara Superior.

 Each of the HEY! exhibitions present multiple works by the artists introducing them to new audiences.They are each documented by extraordinary, fully illustrated publications accompanied by commissioned essays. In the current edition, Maria Porges has written about Crystal Morey, and Lauren Levato Coyne about Mara Superior.

MEET THE ARTISTS

CHRIS ANTEMANN

“Reflecting the visual and stylistic language of the 18th century, Chris Antemann’s art aims at transforming the status of the object while making parodies of social norms and taboos. Gender roles are often reversed, gestures and expressions are based on time-worn themes of passion, power and jealousy.” – curator essay by Anne Richard.

Chris Antemann, Kissing Booth, 2023, 17”h, photo Kendrick Moholt.

MARA SUPERIOR

“From there, [she], like many of us, sees the news, imagines the future, and find solace in the triumphant artworks of the past. She is chronicling our time, a unique and strange mix of hope in the ace of humanities greatest collective threat— ourselves.” –  Mara Superior, Chronicling our Collective Hopes– essay by Lauren Levato-Coyne
 

Mara Superior, Birth of Venus (After Sandro Botticelli), 2021, 17.5” h, photo: John Polak.

CRYSTAL MOREY

“Quotations from eighteenth-century painting and sculpture, as well as from the extraordinary richness of that period’s porcelain, all come together in Pop/Surrealist figures of astonishing delicacy and beauty.”– Crystal Morey, Shaping Interconnectedness – essay by Maria Porges

Crystal Morey, RePlanting: Over the Land (Mt. Lion and Unicorn), 2022, 17.5″ h, detail.

MEET THE HEY! TEAM

ANNE RICHARD
Author, publisher, curator, founder of HEY! Modern Art & Pop Culture

Anne Richard has been working in the art world under three pseudonyms (Anne & Julien, Anne de HEY!, Rosita Warlock) since 1986. Her knowledge of pop subcultures, as well as a solid involvement in alternative arts, have made her a key player in the cultural landscape, thanks to her national and international achievements. In 2010, she co-founded the multidisciplinary structure HEY! modern art & pop culture, which she has directed ever since.

ZOÉ FORGET
Photographer, Projects and Development Manager

ZoÊ Forget has been a member of HEY! modern art & pop culture since 2012. Initially a photographer, she is now also in charge of publications and exhibitions curated by Anne Richard. A graduate in photography from ENS Louis Lumière, she also holds a doctorate in Aesthetics, Science and Technologies of the Arts and is a lecturer at Paris 8 University. In parallel, she has been developing a personal photographic practice, focusing in recent years on hair and femininity.

HEY! CERAMIQUE.S EXHIBITION CATALOG

Includes beautiful artwork photos, essays, and installation content of and about the exhibition. 

Released September 15, 2023
Edited by Anne Richard Bilingual (French/English)
250 pages
28 x 24.5cm
Published by HEY! PUBLISHING
48.00€

MUSEUM NEWS

Ferrin Contemporary’s newsletters connect artists, collectors, art professionals and the media with exhibitions and opportunities to learn more about artist practices, works on view and new work taking place in the studios.

FERRIN CONTEMPORARY
now located at ProjectArt at 54 Main Street in Cummington, MAOpen by appointment Winter – Spring.
Contact us to arrange a visit in person or by zoom
info@ferrincontemporary.com

 

forward to a friend  | inquire about a work
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Ferrin Contemporary

54 Main Street

Cummington, MA 01026

Add us to your address book

Copyright Š 2023 , Ferrin Contemporary, All rights reserved.
Posted by Isabel Twanmo in Artist News
Sergei Isupov & Kadri Pärnamets: MISS COMET | Cummington, MA

Sergei Isupov & Kadri Pärnamets: MISS COMET | Cummington, MA

Sergei Isupov & Kadri Pärnamets: MISS COMET | Cummington, MA

Public Installation


The mosaic sculpture Miss Comet landed at Project Art in summer of 2022. Designed by Sergei Isupov, the 9′ sculpture was fabricated and completed in collaboration with artist Kadri Pärnamets. Now a permanent installation in front of their studio at Project Art on Main Street in Cummington, MA, the artists engaged with the local community throughout the process. 

Miss Comet was proposed for Reflections, a grant funded public art project to create new works reflecting on the land and history of the area. Working in late spring of 2022, the couple received donations, excavated shard piles at nearby pottery studios, and produced fabricated elements to articulate the figure’s features. Throughout the process, unwanted, forgotten, chipped, broken plates and other treasures, including “mudsharked” river shards were left at the sculpture’s base to be incorporated. Donations came with tales of family histories, prior ownership, unfortunate demise or abandonment. Ceramic shards include fragments of work by Michael McCarthy, Paul Scott, Mark Shapiro, Eric Smith, Mara Superior, and Connie Talbot. Part archaeology, part commemoration, each object tells a story and provides an opportunity to reflect on the present and history in this small but deeply connected Western Massachusetts community.

The sculpture is located at 54 Main Street, Cummington, MA 01026 and visible to the public. 

Ceramic shards include fragments of work by Michael McCarthy, Paul Scott, Mark Shapiro, Eric Smith, Mara Superior, and Connie Talbot.

Sergei Isupov and Kadri Pärnamets
MISS COMET
ceramic shards and mixed media
82 x 64 x 22”

More on Project Art HERE

More on Sergei Isupov HERE

More on Sergei Isupov HERE

Permanent Public Art Mosaic Sculpture by Sergei Isupov & Kadri Pärnamets


Ferrin Contemporary at Project Art | Cummington, MA 

Posted by Isabel Twanmo in Blog, News
Women Working with Clay: A Shared Purpose at the Valentine Museum, Richmond, VA

Women Working with Clay: A Shared Purpose at the Valentine Museum, Richmond, VA

Linda Sikora in “Women Working with Clay: A Shared Purpose” at the Valentine Museum

Linda Sikora featured in


After 12 years, over 64 artists have participated in the Women Working with Clay Symposium at Hollins University. Women Working with Clay: A Shared Purpose highlights the work of 24 former regional presenters.

Featured artists include Jennifer Allen, Mary Barringer, Raheleh Filsoofi, Andrea Gill, Eva Kwong, Winnie Owens-Hart, Ellen Shankin, Linda Sikora, Lydia C. Thompson, gwendolyn yoppolo, Cynthia Bringle, Gerald A. Brown, Danielle Carelock, Louise Deroualle, April D. Felipe, Silvie Granatelli, Dara Hartman, Jeanine Hill, Suze Lindsay, Liz Lurie, Sana Musasama, Donna Polseno, Stacy Snyder, Shoko Teruyama.

This exhibition is organized Dara Hartman in conjunction with Coalescence, the 58th annual conference of the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts held March 20-23, 2024 in Richmond, Virginia.

More on the Exhibition HERE

More on Linda Sikora HERE

Women Working with Clay: A Shared Purpose


The Valentine | Richmond, VA | March 20, 2024 – March 23, 2024

Posted by Isabel Twanmo in Artist News, Events
Beth Lipman: ReGift at the Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, OH

Beth Lipman: ReGift at the Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, OH

Beth Lipman: ReGift at the Toledo Museum of Art

Beth Lipman in


ReGift is a sculptural installation created specifically for the Toledo Museum of Art. It will go on view in Gallery 18, August 12, 2023.

Motivated by histories Lipman discovered in the archives at the TMA, the project features a three-quarter life-sized recreation of the parlor in Edward and Florence Libbey’s Old West End house. Using the Libbey’s bookplate as a visual guide (the only known image of their home interior) Lipman filled this architectural space with objects found in the image that she fabricated in transparent and opaque white glass.

Some of these original household objects, including furniture, were gifted to the Museum by Florence Scott Libbey upon her death in 1938 and later sold in the 1990s. Lipman’s project symbolically gifts these objects, along with their stories, to the entire Toledo community. By looking closely at an internal aspect of Florence’s life, the project aims to emphasize her deeply personal commitment to the Museum. It emphasizes her involvement in building the Museum’s legacy and, importantly, the impact of the Libbey’s on Toledo.

Glass elements for ReGift were made in the TMA’s hotshop at the Glass Pavilion during a 2022 GAPP residency. A glass press, donated to TMA by Libbey company was also utilized to create components, conceptually triangulating the founder’s business with the Museum and the Libbey’s personal life. Through the GAPP residency, the project fulfills an institutional goal to continue to promote experimentation in the glass studio, connecting past history to present creative practice.

For artist Beth Lipman, the project’s intent is to accentuate the impact of Toledo Museum of Art founders and reaffirm the Museum’s position as a catalyst within community. Lipman states, “Today, our trust in institutions has been undermined; ReGift is an opportunity to strengthen and reinvigorate the Museum’s critical role in our culture.”

A short film will accompany the installation. Commissioned for the project, filmmaker Atesh Atici found inspiration in Florence Scott Libbey’s approach to her community in the early days of the Toledo Museum of Art. Considering current polarization within our society and a growing separation from public spaces, Florence’s desire to, “encourage attendance on the part of all people irrespective of condition of life” is key to refocusing attention on the Museum’s ethos of creating a space for serving the community of Toledo and beyond. The film evokes Florence’s ideas through a dramatization of these ideas.

More on the Exhibition HERE

More on Beth Lipman HERE

Beth Lipman: ReGift


Toledo Museum of Art | Toledo, OH | August 12, 2023 — September 1, 2024

CATALOG


Beth Lipman: ReGift shares some of the unwritten histories that artist Beth Lipman discovered while conducting research in the archives of the Toledo Museum of Art. Her exploration inspired a room-sized recreation in wood, glass, and metal of a scene from a bookplate used by the museum’s founders, Edward Drummond Libbey and Florence Scott Libbey. Lipman was particularly keen to examine Florence’s life, and in conversation with curator Diane C. Wright and archivist Julie A. McMaster, she discusses the project’s origins in her own artistic practice and its relationship to shifting understandings of institutions and their publics. An essay by Wright and McMaster draws on additional archival materials to fill in some of the gaps in our knowledge of Florence Scott Libbey’s life.

Published in conjunction with the exhibition Beth Lipman: ReGift, exclusively at the Toledo Museum of Art, August 12, 2023-September 1, 2024.

Written by Diane C. Wright, Senior Curator of Glass and Contemporary Craft, Toledo Museum of Art; featuring a conversation with Beth Lipman and contributions by Julie A. McMaster, Archivist, Toledo Museum of Art.

Softcover, 9 1/4″ x 6 3/4″
Published by the Toledo Museum of Art. Š 2023 Toledo Museum of Art

$19.95

PURCHASE THE CATALOG HERE

Posted by Isabel Twanmo in Artist News, Events
Courtney M. Leonard featured in THE NEW TRANSCENDENCE. at Friedman Benda, New York, NY

Courtney M. Leonard featured in THE NEW TRANSCENDENCE. at Friedman Benda, New York, NY

Courtney M. Leonard featured in THE NEW TRANSCENDENCE. at Friedman Benda

January 11 – February 24, 2024

Exhibition at | Friedman Benda
515 West 26th ST |  New York, NY 10001

The New Transcendence, the last in a series of three pace-setting exhibitions curated by Glenn Adamson for Friedman Benda, will explore the place of the spiritual in contemporary design today. The works on view are infused with profound significance, whether as relics, ritual tools, or representations. The New Transcendence is not an exhibition about religion in the organized, traditional, or dogmatic sense. Rather, it aims to discover how design can serve as a vehicle for personal and societal transcendence.

The exhibition includes work by six designers: Ini Archibong, Andrea Branzi, Stephen Burks, Najla El Zein, Courtney M. Leonard, and Samuel Ross. Each of the participants has their own perspective, yet one thing unites them: the impetus to provide an objective, material anchor for the subjective and ultimately private nature of spiritual belief. The immaterial means something different, today, in our digital age – perhaps making physical artifacts more crucial as anchors for transcendent experience.

Read More & View the Exhibition Page HERE

Posted by Isabel Twanmo in Artist News, Events, Exhibition, On View
Courtney M. Leonard in BOUNDLESS at the Mead Art Museum, Amherst, MA

Courtney M. Leonard in BOUNDLESS at the Mead Art Museum, Amherst, MA

Courtney M. Leonard in “BOUNDLESS” at the Mead Art Museum

Courtney M. Leonard featured in


Boundless is a nearly museum-wide exhibition that features work by Native American writers and artists, grounded in but not contained to the Northeast. Boundless takes shape like water, moving across generations and geographies, and expanding conversations about kinship, presence, resistance, and history through its flow. The exhibition never chooses one path, but moves in multiple directions and broadens as it goes. A wide range of materials from Amherst College’s Collection of Native American Literature and the Mead form the core of the exhibition, and are joined by key works on loan from artists and other institutional and private collections.

The importance of place—including not only land, but water—is featured in Boundless. Water actively names the original peoples of what we now call southern New England. For example, Nipmuc means People of the Freshwater, while the Niantic are People of the Long-Necked Waters because their lands are near a bay; these names are at once a location and the name of its people. Each tribal name is filled with an image, a place, a relationship, and a story referenced in the works of Boundless.

Objects in the exhibition span from the present back to the eighteenth century, and range from paintings to sculpture, video, historical texts, basketry, cookbooks, and more. As well, some objects by non-Native artists provide contrast and context, and are themselves recontextualized.

The broader Boundless project will include an open-access publication through Amherst College Press in 2024, K-12 digital curricular resources and materials developed with Genevieve Simermeyer (Osage Nation of Oklahoma) that will be available this November, in addition to other museum programming throughout the year. Reading rooms within the exhibition offer guests a chance to explore Native American-authored and illustrated books and zines for all ages.

The exhibition is researched and organized by writer and guest curator Heid E. Erdrich (Ojibwe).

More on the Exhibition HERE

More on Courtney M. Leonard HERE

Boundless


At the Mead Art Museum | Amherst, MA | August 29 – January 7, 2024

(top)
Courtney M. Leonard, “BREACH: Logbook 21 | Collider Study #1,” 2021, mixed media, clay, acrylic on canvas

(bottom)
Courtney M. Leonard, “BREACH #2, from BREACH: Logbook 21”, 2016-2021, ceramic on wood pallet

PAST PROGRAMMING


The Mead hosted an evening reception for Boundless and Seeping In: Elizabeth James Perry on Thursday,  September 14th, 2023, at 6-8pm. All were invited to a celebration of both exhibitions involving remarks, performances, and refreshments

Amherst College
220 South Pleasant Street
Amherst, MA 01002

Posted by Isabel Twanmo in Artist News, Events, Exhibition
Jacqueline Bishop’s “History at the Dinner Table” in Black Atlantic: Power, People, Resistance at the Fitzwilliam Museum of Art, Cambridge, UK

Jacqueline Bishop’s “History at the Dinner Table” in Black Atlantic: Power, People, Resistance at the Fitzwilliam Museum of Art, Cambridge, UK

Jacqueline Bishop’s “History at the Dinner Table” Featured in


Which stories get remembered, and why?

This exhibition explores some new stories from history – stories that help us to separate fact from fiction and history from myth.

By bringing together collections from across the University of Cambridge’s museums, libraries and colleges with loans from around the world, Black Atlantic: Power, People, Resistance asks new questions about Cambridge’s role in the transatlantic slave trade and looks at how objects and artworks have influenced history and perspectives.

In 1816, Richard Fitzwilliam donated vast sums of money, literature and art to the University of Cambridge, creating the Museum that is named after him. But Fitzwilliam’s generosity was only possible because of the wealth his grandfather accumulated in part through the transatlantic slave trade. Acknowledging this story for the first time has led to new discoveries about the objects Fitzwilliam donated, the people who collected them, and the cultures that created them.

Displaying objects and artworks made in West Africa, the Caribbean, South America and Europe, this landmark exhibition also reveals the histories that have been silenced; not just stories of exploitation, but those of resilience and liberation, too. It shows how through resisting colonial slavery, people produced new cultures known as the Black Atlantic, that continue to shape our world.

Historic works are shown alongside modern and contemporary works by artists including Barbara Walker, Donald Locke, Alberta Whittle and Keith Piper that challenge and reflect on hidden and untold stories.

The stories in the Black Atlantic can help us to create a fairer future. By rethinking our connected and complex histories and looking again through the lens of contemporary art, tomorrow’s story can be one of repair, hope and freedom.

Black Atlantic is the first in a series of exhibitions and gallery interventions planned for 2023-2026.

More on the Exhibition HERE

More on Jacqueline Bishop HERE

Black Atlantic: Power, People, Resistance


At the Fitzwilliam Museum | Cambridge, UK | September 8 – January 7, 2024

ABOUT HISTORY AT THE DINNER TABLE

As a little girl growing up on the island of Jamaica, Jaqueline Bishop’s grandmother had a large mahogany cabinet where she kept some of her most prized possessions: her bone china crockery. These delicate pieces were painted with bright, cheerful images of palaces and carriages and were only used on special occasions.  

As beautiful as these china dishes were, they often hid a violent history of slavery and colonialism by European countries. In ‘History at the Dinner Table’, Jaqueline changes the story by showing the legacy of slavery on the dishes instead. Despite their violent history, Bishop is also seduced and charmed by the delicacy and beauty of bone chinaware and she has sought to produce dishes equally as beautiful as the ones made by major European centers of bone china production. The work is exhibited in mahogany cabinets as mahogany was once a major luxury import from Jamaica to England. 

British Ceramics Biennale, 2021

EXHIBITION CATALOG


Black Atlantic – Exhibition Catalogue

Black Atlantic: Power, People, Resistance, edited by Victoria Avery & Jake Subryan Richards

Catalogue to accompany the landmark exhibition coming to the Fitzwilliam Museum in autumn 2023. The exhibition brings together significant national and international loans with exhibits from the Fitzwilliam’s collection and from other University museums, colleges, and libraries. The catalogue contains contributions by curators, historians, and artists, exploring the themes and subjects of the exhibition.

Objects and artworks illustrating the financial, scientific, and commercial transformations in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Britain that came about because of enslaved labour are shown in dialogue with modern and contemporary artworks by artists including Donald Locke, Barbara Walker, Keith Piper and Jacqueline Bishop that respond to hidden histories and reveal stories of courage, resistance, hope and repair.

Product details:

  • Softback exhibition catalogue, 192 pages
  • Illustrated in full colour throughout
  • Size: 25 x 19 cm
  • ISBN: 9781781301234
  • Published by Bloomsbury in September 2023

Purchase the catalog here

VIDEOS


Posted by Isabel Twanmo in Artist News, Events