AWOL
"The Hut at Cape Royds" Jim Ovelmen with Mehran Ayati
This painted paper installation by Jim Ovelmen is based on a supply hut near Antarctica, built by explorer Ernest Shackleton during his first 1907-1909 expedition, before attempting to claim the South Pole for England. The room will be covered with paper sculpture, with artworks resembling a theatrical set: heater/stove, sundries, cooking items, that are frozen in time. Framed artwork will also be anachronistically placed.
Installed in the bathroom, by artist/architect Mehran Ayati, will be a video-periscope that will view the illusionistic scene, and project its live-video onto the shower curtain. A viewer will be able to "sit" on the toilet and operate it, to view the main room privately. Room performances will mock the experience a being a distant satellite from civilization. Early century explorers fretting their future odds of survival, having nightmares and premonitions, can describe the improvised performances.
In the hut, artwork from Jim Ovelmen, Michael Dee, Lisa Diane Wedgeworth, Terri Phillips, Brian Cooper, Jay Stuckey, Thomas Whittaker Kidd, and Andrew West will be on view.
The installation presents perspectives of how art shows and fairs function in culture, with expected audiences. Shackleton and his team as “heroic adventurers” is analogized as contemporary artists who are pushing boundaries. Yet, the bold adventurer exerts a cost on others, while claiming “new territory”. There are multiple perspectives of creativity; what one, considers an isolated wasteland, another, an extant civilization plundered.
This installation was recently shown at the Satellite Art Show in Miami Beach during Art Basel week
For more information about AWOL, please visit their website.