Current & Upcoming Exhibitions:
LAND/ART • a collaborative exploration of land-based art in New Mexico
June - November, 2009
In the summer and fall of 2009, 516 ARTS will focus on environmental art with a series of exhibitions and outdoor artworks for the the multi-venue, intercity, collaborative project LAND/ART, which will take place June through November, 2009 in Albuquerque, Santa Fe and Mountainair, New Mexico. 516 ARTS is the coordinating organziation for over 25 New Mexico arts organizations joining together to explore relationships of land, art and community through exhibitions, site-specific art works, lectures, performances, tours and a weekend symposium (June 27 & 28, 2009). Focusing on “environmental” or “land” art, the collaboration seeks to address our changing relationship to nature, and to offer a new or previously unconsidered understanding of the place in which we live. The culminating book, published by Radius Books, will be available in December 2009. LAND/ART features over 60 diverse local, national and international artists. Special guests include David Abram, Erika Blumenfeld, Charles Bowden, the Center for Land Use Interpretation, Patrick Dougherty, William Fox, Nancy Holt, Lynne Hull, Lize Mogel, Rebecca Solnit, DJ Spooky, Tricia Watts and many more. For a complete listing of LAND/ART activities, please visit landartnm.org LAND/ART guide download LAND/ART Blog: smudgestudio.org KSJE intreview: with Basia Irland, Lea Rekow & Suzanne Sbarge. LAND/ART article in Art in America.
Here & There • Seeing New Ground
June 2–July 11, 2009
Here & There: Seeing New Ground features 16 artists examining the landscape from perspectives that are both visual and cultural, including explorations of Native American film, as well as Native and non-Native artists who subvert landscape perspective to examine issues of the environment and human beings’ relationship with nature. Featured artists are Norman Akers, Laurie Anderson, Leticia Bajuyo, Alfred Clah, Cheryl Dietz, Katie Holten, Karl Hofmann, Timothy Horn, David Nakabayashi, Rachael Nez, Pipo Nguyen-duy, Shelley Niro, Lordy Rodriguez, Peter Seward, Leah Siegel and John Wenger. Curated by 516 ARTS with Nancy Marie Mithlo and Marcella Ernest. There are two off-site installations in conjunction with this exhibition: COLOSSUS by Karl Hofmann and the students of Amy Biehl High School, in the Gold Street Lofts in Downtown Albuquerque (June 2 - July 11); and Medusa by Timothy Horn at 1711 Painted Sky Road in Santa Fe (July 10 & 11). More details Catalog download landartnm.org
SiteWorks
Summer/Fall, 2009
(dates vary, all overlap with Second Site, August 1 - September 19, 2009)
516 ARTS presents SiteWorks, a series of individual, site-specific projects: Anitya by Anne Cooper, Matter of Fact: Walk to Work by Bill Gilbert, The Very Rich Hours by Steve Peters and Lost and Found by Jaune Quick-To-See Smith in collaboration with Neal Ambrose Smith, organized by Kathleen Shields Contemporary Art Projects. These projects, which take place at several locations in the Albuquerque area, address relationships of urban and rural, built and natural environments, technology and land use, actual and virtual, art and non-art. Through these artists’ works and experiences of place, aspects of our community will be introduced, revealed or presented in a new perspective. More details landartnm.org
The Center for Land Use Interpretation Bus Tour & Exhibition
Tour June 27, 2009 / exhibition August 1 - September 19, 2009
The Center for Land Use Interpretation (CLUI) is a Los Angeles based research organization involved in exploring, examining and understanding land and landscape issues. For LAND/ART, CLUI will take passengers on a guided bus tour through some of the more compelling and dramatic built landscapes of New Mexico, places at the core of this landscape-centered state (June 27 during LAND/ART Symposium Weekend landartnm.org/tours). CLUI will also create a site-based project in one of the organization's Mobile Exhibition Units installed in the Albuquerque area at a location to be announced. Part orientation center, part destination, the space will be a conceptual "point of departure" for exploring the inner and outer landscape of the region, focusing on notions of the technological sublime. A gallery component will be featured in the Second Site exhibition at 516 ARTS (August 1 - September 19, 2009). More details clui.org landartnm.org
El Otro Lado: The Other Side public art installation on D-Ride Buses
July - August, 2009
516 ARTS & The Academy for the Love of Learning present El Otro Lado: The Other Side, a community-based public art project developed by artist Chrissie Orr, focusing on the themes of migration, boundaries and sense of place. For LAND/ART, the project explores the land where people in our communities come from, touching on issues relating to agriculture, wilderness, community, the environment and sustainability. In Albuquerque, 516 ARTS has offered intergenerational workshops with CHrissie Orr and writer Michelle Otero in Bernalillo County Community Centers in collaboration with Connecting Community Voices. Participants and guest artists have developed symbolic maps/cartograms, visual representations and audio recordings of their stories, journeys, landmarks, boundaries and their sense of place and home in the land. These images are displayed on the interior of ABQ Ride’s D-Ride buses in Downtown Albuquerque during July and August. Ride the free buses that loop around Downtown and experience both the visual images on the interior bus panels and use your cell phone to access the audio storytelling. For information on Santa Fe programs, visit aloveoflearning.org Download press release
Second Site
August 1–September 19, 2009
An exhibition and reference site for LAND/ART, including related art works and information for many of the site-specific projects by artists including Anne Cooper, Bill Gilbert, Steve Peters, Jaune Quick-To-See Smith and Neal Ambrose Smith, the Center for Land Use Interpretation, Patrick Dougherty, Basia Irland, Nina Dubois, Jeanette Hart-Mann and Robert Wilson as well as the model for the final selected piece for the City of Albuquerque’s major land-based public art project launched for LAND/ART. Works include SiteWorks artist Anne Cooper's documentation of the process of creating Anitya, from harvesting of the clay to the dissolution of the bowls and the growth cycles of the crops, and Nina DuBois and Jeanette Hart-Mann's photographic installation relating to the a passive-solar composting laboratory they are creating on the UNM campus. landartnm.org
Equation: a balanced state?
August 1–September 19, 2009
A program for LAND/ART • A collaborative project exploring land-based art in New Mexico
Equation: a balanced state? is an exhibition of site specific installations by artists Katherine E. Bash, Paula Castillo, Ted Laredo, David Niec and Mayumi Nishida, reflecting a world where the environment is as much about ourselves and our creations as the natural world with which we struggle to strike a balance. The exhibition includes digitally simulated waterfalls, built environments that glow in the dark, and explorations of the division between day and night in the natural environment as observed in the night sky of New Mexico. Science, technology and the study of climate and land usage play an important role in the research and development of these art projects. Curated by Thomas and Edite Cates of THE LAND/an art site. landartsite.org landartnm.org
Grasslands
October 3–December 12, 2009
Grasslands is a photographic series by Michael P. Berman about the Chihuahuan Desert grasslands in New Mexico, Texas and the northern border of Mexico, where he has wandered into the desert without a compass to, in his words, “live deliberately.” He believes that how you see the land comes down to what you value. “I believe art has a greater potential for meaning when it serves some purpose. People have started to recognize these lands as significant and this is something art can help along. If anything my work is to generate small symbols that reveal the greater complexity of things.” This exhibition is presented together with Separating Species, both curated by Mary Anne Redding, Curator of Photography, Photo Archives, New Mexico Palace of the Governors. Catalog to be published by Radius Books, including essays by William deBuys, Rebecca Solnit and Mary Anne Redding.
Separating Species
October 3–December 12, 2009
Concurrent with Grasslands, the Separating Species exhibition features artists focusing on animals, humans, the biosphere and the U.S. Mexico border, including photographers Krista Elrick, Dana Fritz, David Taylor and Jo Whaley. Curator Mary Anne Redding recounts an essay by Terry Tempest Williams, In the Shadow of Extinction, about the destruction of prairie dogs on the Navajo Reservation. The Navajo elders objected, insisting that if you kill all the prairie dogs, there will be no one to cry for the rain. Redding says, “all things are intertwined: the rain, prairie dogs, folklorists, environmentalists, writers, academics, even those in the government.” Grasslands and Separating Species look at these disappearing desert grasslands and the animals that are affected when ecosystems, both in the desert and elsewhere, are destroyed: “no one is left to cry for the rain.”
