Curator Statement & CVs
Curatorial Statement by Leslie Moody Castro
I love that twisted neurosis, those moments of sick, sick emotional storms between the calm serenity of what I call love. I love every moment of wishing you were there beside me in my bed, filling my heart, and my head.
And maybe it's all because I just love love more than I really love you. Maybe it's just because I prefer the topsy-turvy, crazy in love with love than anything else. That's the feeling that keeps me coming back, wanting more, asking for more when I know that sometimes I should just walk away. It's these patterns of love mark our most unbelievable heartbreaks, and our most precious moments. My wicked, twisted sense of love is the irony and the humor of love that just leaves us wanting more, over and over.
I want this exhibition to be a catalyst for personal reflection for the visitor. I anticipate that humor will be one which will allow many to relate further to the works in the show, and will reach a broader audience and will provide a framework for the more abstract ideas of longing, solitude, and companionship that will be explored in the exhibition.
The exhibition will have a performative aspect for viewers. First, each invitation sent out to the Women & Their Work mailing list will be hand screen printed by myself and James Beard of Coronado Studios. The invitations are two editions in one series, where half the invitations are a love letter, and half are a break up letter. What the visitor receives will be in the luck of the draw. Both invitations, break up and love, ask the viewers to either come and love more, or to participate in the dysfunctional relationship.
The Love Letter:
To my most beloved,
I seek your approval in everything I do everyday of my life. You are my measure for goodness and I look to your smile for happiness. You are the best thing I have ever had, what I have worked hardest for, and what I treasure the most.
I adore you, I need you, I love you.
Please don't ever leave me. I don't know how to be alone anymore.
The Break-up Letter
To the love of all my loves,
You are the definition of love. You are happiness and sunshine and everything beautiful.
But life is far more complicated, twisted and tangled.
I feel suffocated by your affection. I hate myself when I am around you. I hate the person you have turned me into. Your presence exasperates and inspires me. It is all too confusing, and I simply cannot take anymore.
I know that I am worthy of being loved, but your love is too good, too deep and too nauseating. I have lost my identity in you, and this is not your fault, it is mine.
Please hate me. Hate me with every centimeter that forms the physicality of who you are. Hate me with every tooth that comprises your beautiful smile, hate me with your bright eyes, and with all five fingers that compose your possessing hands that once held me tight.
Hate me so that I may love myself again.
Yours forever throughout eternity,
Artist CVs
Katri Walker
b. 1978 Edinburgh, Scotland
Lives and works between Glasgow and Mexico City
Both the spontaneity and mundane of reality fascinate and challenge me. For me entering a different social reality and using that entrance, as a basis for making work is incredibly rewarding.
In my work I try to capture the nuances of particular moments, I look for the everyday in the extraordinary and vice-versa. Through video, sound and occasionally even drawing, my work exposes vulnerability alongside strength and resolve. I'm interested in creating an intimate dialogue with my subject, but one that can be appreciated on a universal level.
Documentary itself is about the realities that cannot be represented in fiction but paradoxically it always involves some fictional element. My work is not so much about this opposition between fiction and reality but more so about embracing them both in order to draw the viewer into a story, a life, a conversation or simply a moment.
It's important for me to find value in the perhaps otherwise overlooked, and to turn that into an emotive experience for an audience. Through my work I try to grasp with the relational nature of life. Mind vs. body, matter vs. spirit, good vs. bad, whilst maintaining the awareness that none of these things are truly separate from one another, everything contains its opposite. Life contains death. Death contains seeds for new life. Joy contains the seeds of sadness. Sadness contains the seeds of joy.
Education
2005-2007
Master of Fine Art, Glasgow School of Art, Scotland & Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne, Australia
1998-2002
BA (Hons) 1st class Fine Art/Sculpture, Glasgow School of Art, Scotland & Tampere Polytechnic School of Art and Media, Finland
Solo Exhibitions
2009
Sometimes It Makes Me Wonder What I Fought For, SWG3, Glasgow (upcoming)
2008
The Black Swan, Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (PICA), Australia
In Transit, (duo show with Dani Marti) Glasgow International
2005
I Love DF, Garash Galería, Mexico City
Selected Group Exhibitions
2009
Title t.b.c, A.Vermin, Glasgow (upcoming)
Citámbulos, Architekturforum Oberösterreich (AFO), Linz, Austria
2008
¡Juega!, Museo de Mujeres Artistas Mexicanas, Mexico
Citámbulos, Deutschen Architektur Zentrum (DAZ), Berlin
Changarrito, Queen's Nails Annexe, San Francisco
2007
Further More (MFA Degree Show)
Tramway <http://www.tramway.org/>
Glasgow & Artnews Projects <http://artnews.org/gallery.php>, Berlin
Betrayal, The Crypt at St Andrews, Holborn, London
2006
Emergiendo de la Sombra, Edificio Antiguo de las Finanzas, Mexico City
Moving Love, VCA Gallery, Melbourne, Australia
MFA/Hiscox Interim Show, Glasgow School of Art, Scotland
Salon MFA, Kunstvlaai, Amsterdam, Holland
New Ruins, The City Watch House, EmergeD & Next Wave Festival, Melbourne, Australia
Emerging From the Shadow, The Cellars at Shoreditch Townhall, London
www.katriwalker.com
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Anthony Romero
Lives and works in Chicago, Illinois
My work is about performance and identity.
I am interested in the ways that communication technologies along with the internet allow the individual to perform, document and broadcast any number of identities to a global audience.
Education
2009
BA Art History, Texas State University, San Marcos
Group Exhibitions
2008
Shaman and The Warrior: Chapter 1: Prayermakers and Bonesetters, Co-Lab Project Space, Austin TX
Harvest, MASS Gallery, Austin TX
Changaritto, Fusebox Festival, Austin TX
Travels to Queens Nails Annex, San Francisco CA
2007
Come On Feel The Whatever, Peter Center Gallery, Concordia University, Austin TX
Beasts/Monsters, Rert Space, Austin TX
In Print
Juwanna Go To The Ruins, Man. Cantanker Magazine, Issue 7: Identity
TRANSFORMERS ART: Austin artists manipulate Ordinary Materials. Austin American Statesman, Sunday, July 1, 2007
Forest Talks. The Austin Chronicle, June 23, 2006
Professional Experience
MASS Gallery, Austin TX, Current - Treasurer
Texas Biennial, Austin TX, 2008-09 - Volunteer Coordinator
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Laura Ann Meyers
Lives and works in Atlanta, Georgia
Memory, childhood, playfulness, tragedy, comedy, love, innocence, death. These are the parts of my life that are crushed into my work.
Adolescent rites of passage-marked by loss, celebration, family, and tradition-manifest in drawings, paintings, sculptures, and videos. These experiences serve as reference points in life's timeline becoming blurred and obstructed remembrances. Like a keepsake, the stories of these vital experiences of my life are formed into tactile objects. These objects are created with an adolescent technology, an awkward hand, and a sense of childlike naivety, intuition, and earnestness. The work teeters the line between sincerity and sarcasm, where fairy-tale expectations are often met with disappointment.
My most recent body of work confronts notions of love and marriage. The theme is based upon this turning point in my own life, where I am constantly peeling away the layers of "marriage" like an onion. I am contemplating the tradition of the ritual rite itself, one of idyllic transformation from innocence to knowledge, but I am also vocalizing personal fears and insecurities. A giddy, girlish crush is contrasted with the seriousness of the moment: being separated from one's own family and potentially starting a new one. Consequently, this action becomes cyclical from child to wife to mother, and back to child again. It is because of this cycle that I am also investigating my relationship to my mother. Tied into this exploration is my idealized view of my parents' marriage, one that was abruptly shattered upon my father's untimely death. It is for this reason that death and/or disappointment is so closely related to marriage in the work. Each piece seems forlorn, pining for a lost love.
Although the imagery strives to be honest, the absolute truth is futile. Details of each moment fade away, or become perversely exaggerated, humorously commemorated or weirdly sanctified. Poignant moments are memorialized, but in their glorification they are transformed into bittersweet momento-mori. In an attempt to grasp the past some elements are drawn, veiled, and re-drawn, while others are decorated with a Victorian notion of preservation. The particulars of each vignette are not important, only the intention is. The memories become strangely reborn: shrine-like and precious, but ironically disposable. The point-of-view is one that is caught at a turning point, one between an idealized childhood and a necessary adulthood.
EDUCATION
2009
MFA, Painting, Savannah College of Art and Design
2008
Visiting Artist Course with Nene Humphrey, Savannah College of Art and Design
2007
BA, Studio Art, Rhodes College (Cum Laude)
EXHIBITIONS
2009
Baggage un/claimed, NAVO, Atlanta, GA (Group)
Works on Paper, Gallery RFD, Swainsboro, GA (Group)
Battle Cats and Beast Moans, 290 MLK, Atlanta, GA (Group)
2008
Pin-up Show, MOCA GA, Atlanta, GA (Group)
Party Favor, Savannah College of Art and Design Open Studio Night (Solo)
2007
Secret Paintings, 2547 Broad Ave, Memphis, TN, (Two-person)
Push it One Way or Another Senior Thesis Show, Clough-Hanson Gallery of Rhodes
College, Memphis, TN (Group)
2006
Juried Student Show, Clough-Hanson Gallery of Rhodes College, Memphis, TN, (Group)
2005
Juried Student Show, Clough-Hanson Gallery of Rhodes College, Memphis, TN, (Group)
Video Exhibition, Sub-Space South, Memphis, TN (Group)
2004
Juried Student Show, Clough-Hanson Gallery of Rhodes College, Memphis, TN, (Group)
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Gabriela Rodriguez and Luis Carlos Hurtado
Both were born and live in Mexico City
http://www.mondaocorp.com.mx/cvgabriela.html
