December 14, 2019- January 5, 2020
Opening reception Saturday December 14th, 6-10pm
Rooms 1 & 2:
Thomas Whitworth
Constructed Realities & Scenarios
“Constructed Realities & Scenarios” is a two-roomed solo exhibition by former UNO Photography Professor, Thomas Whitworth, who currently lives and works in central Florida.
His body of work entitled “Constructed Realities” consists of diptychs that highlight the idea that understanding meaning from photographs may not come from the image itself, but from the spaces between representation, analysis and real knowledge. In the other series, “Constructed Scenarios”, the cinematic tableaus engage viewers through their invented narratives and ultimately presents semi-factual information that questions the truth in our vast image and information environments.
Contructed Realities (Female Nude - Yellow Glove)
Constructed Realities (Apocalypse)
Room 3:
Lake Verret, Archival Inkjet Print, 18" x 24"| Bonnet Carre Spillway, Archival Inkjet Print, 10"x12"| Grand Isle, Archival Inkjet Print, 10" x 12"| Lake Verret II, Archival Inkjet Print, 11" x 14"
Virginia Hanusik
A Receding Coast: The Architecture and Infrastructure of South Louisiana
Virginia Hanusik is an artist and writer whose work explores the relationship between landscape, culture, and the built environment. Her projects on climate change and environmental justice have been exhibited internationally, featured in Domus, Places Journal, NPR, Fast Company, Oxford American, Newsweek, and The Atlantic, among others, and supported by the Graham Foundation and Mellon Foundation. She is a member of the Climate Working Group at New York University and is currently working on a body of work about climate adaptation along the American coast. She received her BA from Bard College and lives in New York City.
There is a vast amount of media to consume related to climate change. We are bombarded with images and stories about the crisis that is looming, or already underway, for residents of coastal environments on a daily basis. What is missing from the conversation is how Louisiana fits into the larger international paradigm shift of how we inhabit coastal space and what that physically looks like.
Architectural style and land use patterns of a region provide details and insight into the values of a certain place. Over the past five years, this project has explored the history of building practices and development in South Louisiana, and our collective memory as a landscape transforms. This collection of photographs is a small representation of an ongoing body of work addressing climate justice and adaptation along the American coast.
As national adaptation strategies are underway to protect certain populations from rising sea levels, more needs to be done to create an accessible platform for discourse, engagement, and mobilization across communities. Documenting these spaces and learning from the mistakes of past development can assist in planning for a new system of inhabiting coastal land that is symbiotic with the natural world.
http://www.virginiahanusik.com/
Room 4:
Tammy Mercure
Sleeping by the Bayou
Sleeping by the Bayou is an exploration of the ten cemeteries of St Bernard Parish. The cemeteries contain the rich history of the area and the current state of the parish. With cultural changes in death customs and climate change, the cemeteries are increasingly hard to keep up. The cemeteries include the defunct True Love Cemetery, a former cemetery for the enslaved people of the Sebastopol Plantation that continued until 2001; Saint Bernard Catholic Cemetery which predates St Louis I by two years, the defunct E.E. Matt Pet Cemetery, the First Baptist Church of Verrettville Cemetery which is run by the direct descendant of the Rev Samual Smith who founded the cemetery in the 1870s; and more. This exhibition is a selection of the visuals from the project that show the tiny delights in walking around a cemetery.
As the project continues, the next goals are to complete the listings at Find A Grave, work with the cemetery caretakers to identify areas for volunteerism and to help coordinate volunteers and funding for maintenance, documentation, and finding a way to memorialize lost cemeteries.
Tammy Mercure (b.1976) was named one of the “100 under 100: The New Superstars of Southern Art” by Oxford American magazine. She is one of the fifty photographers represented in the traveling exhibition “Southbound: Photographs of and About the New South” originating at the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art in Charleston, SC. Her work has been exhibited at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, the William King Museum in Abingdon VA, and Tracy Morgan Gallery in Asheville. She has been featured on CNN Photos, VICE, Daily Mail, GQ, NPR Big Picture Show, and more. She was published in the Southern Cultures, Guardian UK (Big Picture), Oxford American and in the book “Place, Art, and Self” by Yi-Fu Tuan. She has a BA from Columbia College Chicago and an MFA from East Tennessee State University. She lives in Violet, LA (outside of New Orleans).
Her work concerns the rites and rituals of the American South and the relationship one has to the land. She often works in book form starting with a popular monthly zine series using letterpress in 2012. She has continued to make books and designed Polo Silk’s “Pop That Thang” in 2017. She has spoken on the subject in many panel discussions, taught a one-day book workshop for PhotoNOLA, and curated three unique book exhibitions at Antenna called the Blue Library.
http://sleepingbythebayou.com/
https://photonola.org/event/sleeping-by-the-bayou-tammy-mercure/