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| Kristin
Bly :: Environmental
Media ::
Reclamation
(the average artist)
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2002 |
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This performance/installation continued the thread of works that call for direct associations with production and labor. Reclamation was a site and context specific work created during the exhibition 48 Hours. Every year, the B.K. Smith gallery presents a weekend event where several artists are called on to stay in the gallery for 48 hours and produce an artwork that remains on display. Artists invariably work in all types of media, and tend to treat their allotted space as a splinter studio and the time an opportunity to make new works. The intention of Reclamation was to gather the detritus from all the participating artists, catalogue data, reclaim and display the would-be trash and thereby give an abstract account of the blurred process that was prevalent throughout the weekend of art-making. Although the community was encouraged to stop-by and witness the making unfold, many people saw the exhibition after-the-fact as a static remnant of the two-day affair. The display vitrines in Reclamation were arranged in columns, and the collected trash was either placed into clear containment bags or wrapped with clear tape. Each collection was tagged with the artists assigned identification number. Pressed against the clear covering of the columns, these vacuum packed histories gave a physical snapshot of the behind-the-scene activity that gave shape to each artists' creation. An added component to the work was the act of weighing the trash, and keeping a running graph of the accumulated matter. Although this had obvious association to environmental concerns and issues of waste management, it was more a gesture to the works title and a reference to the truism that suggests the transformation of trash to treasure.
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