Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center Announces Summer Exhibitions
By: A.A. Cristi May. 08, 2019
Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center (BMCM+AC) is pleased to announce the summer 2019 exhibitions Materials, Sounds + Black Mountain College and BAUHAUS 100, opening June 7th.
Civilization seems in general to estrange men from materials, from materials in their original form [...] But if we want to get from materials the sense of directness, the adventure of being close to the stuff the world is made of, we have to go back to the material itself, to its original state, and from there on partake in its stages of change. - Anni Albers, Work with Materials (Black Mountain College Bulletin No. 5)
100 years on, the legacy of the Bauhaus can be seen in the ways that contemporary artists and craftspeople interact with material and design. Black Mountain College (1933 - 1957) was an incubation space for some of the greatest artists of the 20th century, steered by Bauhaus visionaries Josef and Anni Albers. In this fertile ground, building upon the principles of the Bauhaus, artists like the Alberses, Ruth Asawa, John Cage, and M.C. Richards tested the limits of material, finding new avenues that ultimately changed the landscape of art. BMCM+AC's Summer 2019 exhibitions look back on the history of the Bauhaus, its tremendous influence on BMC, and the endless potential now open to contemporary artists to play with material, sound, and the gallery space.
Originally exhibited at MAMA Albury (Australia) Materials, Sounds + Black Mountain College draws from innovative Australian artists working in new frontiers of sound and interaction in the gallery space, contextualized at BMCM+AC within the legacy of experimentation at Black Mountain College. Meanwhile, in our lower level gallery, we will celebrate the Bauhaus Centennial with Bauhaus designs and artworks, newly gifted to the BMCM+AC Permanent Collection. Bauhaus 100 will explore the impact of the school in design, art, and education and the ways in which it shaped the structure and ethos of Black Mountain College.
Read on for more information on Upcoming Exhibitions + Programs
Featured Exhibitions:
Materials, Sounds + Black Mountain College
July 7, 2019 August 31, 2019
Opening Reception: Friday, June 7 5:30PM - 8PM
Curated by Caleb Kelly
BMCM+AC | 120 College Street | Asheville, NC
This new exhibition brings together contemporary artists who each create an experience that is focused on the making of sound through materials. The artists in Materials, Sounds + Black Mountain College challenge the stability of materials in their practice. Handmade instruments and electronics, recycled electronic components, outmoded technologies, fake technologies, imagined sounds and silences will form a series of dynamic installations that challenge the way we think about materiality in a cumulative sound experience.
The work by the Australian artists has a lineage in the experimental practices developed by artists and students at Black Mountain College. Newly commissioned works will be exhibited alongside works from the BMCM+AC permanent collection that demonstrate innovative, materials-based processes. Originally exhibited at MAMA Albury (Australia), Materials, Sounds + Black Mountain College will further demonstrate the international influence of the College and draw out connections with contemporary practices. Materials, Sounds + Black Mountain College is supported by the Australian Arts Council.
About the Curator: Caleb Kelly is a New Zealand born academic and curator working from Sydney, Australia. Focusing on sound in the arts, he has most recently published Gallery Sound (Bloomsbury 2017) and previously the influential edited volume SOUND (Whitechapel Gallery and MIT Press, 2011). In 2018 he curated Material Sound at MAMA Albury Australia, an exhibition that will tour Australian regional galleries from 2020 to 2022. Kelly is a senior academic at the UNSW Art & Design Australia.
Artists Include:
Pia van Gelder is a Sydney-based electronic artist and researcher. Her work involves designing and building electronic instruments that are presented in performance and interactive installation contexts. Her works investigate our relationships with technology and energy. Van Gelder was a co-director of Serial Space, Sydney and is a Curator/Coordinator of Dorkbot, a monthly event for lovers of electricity.
Peter Blamey is a Sydney-based artist, working across performance, video, recording, and installation. His work explores the interconnected themes of energies and residues often through reimagining and recasting our everyday encounters with technologies and the physical world and also our experiences of energy generation, use, and wastage. His work has been exhibited in both artist-run and institutional settings.
Vicky Browne is a New Zealand artist based in the Blue Mountains of Australia whose work engages in sound as a core theme. Browne works in a speculative manner, building her own record players, iPods, and radios out of found materials, and it is this handmade quality that reveals a close connection to materials. Her work has been exhibited in numerous spaces nationally and internationally.
Nathan Thompson is a New Zealand artist based in Wollongong, Australia who works across sound, sculpture, and drawing. He creates music and audio installations that use audio feedback to make analogous connections to the self-organizing properties of environmental systems. He has exhibited in numerous artist-run spaces including The Physics Room (NZ), Firstdraft (Australia), Audio Foundation (NZ) and public galleries in New Zealand and Australia.
Amanda Hollomon-Cook is the Director of the Design Studio at East Fork, an Asheville-based manufacturer of ceramic dinnerware. A former apprentice of East Fork's Alex Matisse and John Vigeland, Hollomon-Cook draws from a lineage of potters that can be traced back to Bernard Leach (BMC ceramics instructor, 1952.) Through a collaborative installation in this exhibition, Hollomon-Cook + East Fork will bring local traditions and the Black Mountain College legacy into conversation with contemporary sound artist Jenn Grossman.
Josh Copus is a community-centric potter based in Marshall, NC. Through countless hours of working with potters in the Asheville area and throughout the nation, Copus has developed a personally significant approach to making pottery that values the importance of local materials. Josh's work references historical forms and processes while remaining relevant to the contemporary art world. Through his collaboration with sound artist Jenn Grossman, Copus will further expand the possibilities of clay as a material and practice.
Jenn Grossman is an experimental musician/sound installation/experiential media artist living and working in NYC. Lingering somewhere between philosophical, psychological, and artistic approaches to exploring sound and light, she is interested in ways that they heighten emotional, social, and sensory awareness, cause materials to transcend themselves and engage us in active modes of perception from the art gallery to the street.
Read on for BAUHAUS 100 + Exhibition Programming
BAUHAUS 100
June 7, 2019 - August 31, 2019
Opening Reception: Friday, June 7, 5:30PM - 8PM
BMCM+AC | 120 College Street | Asheville, NC
Celebrating the 100th Anniversary of the founding of the BAUHAUS, we look at the impact of this legendary and influential school of art and design. The Bauhaus closed the same year that Black Mountain College opened (1933) and had an enormous influence on the structure and ethos of BMC. This intimate exhibition will feature materials and artworks from the Bauhaus and BMC, drawing connections through education, design, and philosophy. The Bauhaus Centennial is a global celebration, commemorating this remarkable history through exhibitions and lectures as well as exploring what the Bauhaus means in contemporary society.
Opening Weekend Programs:
Friday + Saturday, June 8 + 9 - 1pm
Playing with Sound Kids Workshop with Vicky Browne
Astound your friends and family by making simple yet annoyingly affecting noise machines.
Free with registration - ages 5-11 recommended
Saturday, June 8 - 2:30pm
Gallery talk by exhibition curator Caleb Kelly
Caleb Kelly is a New Zealand born academic and curator working from Sydney, Australia. His research and curation focus on sound in the arts.
Free
Saturday, June 8, 7pm
Performances by exhibition artists Pia van Gelder, Peter Blamey, and Nathan Thompson from Australia, and Jenn Grossman from New York, will use processes that explore the material nature of handmade electronics, solar power, feedback systems, and contained sound.
Free
Additional Programming Includes:
Eight Tuesdays beginning June 18 1-3pm
Drawing Workshop
Regi Wiele, architect and educator, teaches this 8 session workshop synthesizing the Foundation Courses of the Werkbund Movement, the DeStijl Movement, and the Bauhaus. Workshop sessions will be progressive in series from drawing tools and materials, to light as formgiver in space, composition, proportions, and color all in service to the lyrical role of the line. Space is limited. Pre-registration required.
$160 for BMCM+AC members + students w/ID / $200 non-members
Saturday, June 22 7pm
FILMS@BMCM+AC
Reclamations of Blackness
Vonnie Quest, filmmaker, curator, and founder of the Afro+ProjectionLAB, presents the cinema art program Reclamations of Blackness in which filmmakers use experimental modes of image-making to challenge cinematic notions of blackness.
FREE for BMCM+AC members + students w/ID / $8 non-members
Friday, June 28
Yowana Sari Gamelan ensemble
Presented in collaboration with Asheville Percussion Festival
4-5:30pm - workshop
Free Gamelan Workshop with Yowana Sari hosted by Michael Lipsey, director of Aaron Copland School of Music at CUNY. Instruments provided.
Pre-registration required
8pm - performance
Currently in residence at the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College, Gamelan Yowana Sari has recently returned from a tour in Indonesia. They will perform I Dewa Ketut Alit's work, traditional Balinese arrangements, and a new arrangement of Double Music by BMC composers Lou Harrison and John Cage.
Tickets: $15 at the door / advance online discount
Wednesday, July 10 12-1pm
PERSPECTIVES Lunchtime Conversations @ BMCM+AC
Explore our Materials, Sounds, and Black Mountain College exhibition along with an artist, historian, or scholar who will give perspective and context to the work from their particular point of view. Guest Speakers: Amanda Hollomon-Cook and Josh Copus, artists in the exhibition. FREE
Thursday, July 18 7pm
Cage Shuffle
Cage Shuffle is a dance/theater solo performance by Paul Lazar featuring a series of one-minute stories by John Cage from his 1963 score Indeterminacy, while simultaneously performing a complex choreographic score by Annie-B Parson. Cage's humor, intellect and iconoclasm find expression adding dance to his original performance instructions: Read stories aloud, paced so that each story takes one minute, using chance procedures or not.
$10 for BMCM+AC members + students w/ID / $15 non-members
Thursday, August 8 7pm
Poetry Reading with Jeffery Beam
Poet Jeffery Beam discusses, reads, and sings from Spectral Pegasus/Dark Movements. The book is the result of a six month collaboration with Welsh painter Clive Hicks-Jenkins, and details a Hero's journey through death, resurrection, psychological and spiritual trials, and revelations into redemptive vision. Co-sponsored by The Captain's Bookshelf. FREE
Wednesday, August 14 12-1pm
PERSPECTIVES Lunchtime Conversations @ BMCM+AC
Explore our BAUHAUS 100 exhibition along with an artist, historian, or scholar who will give perspective and context to the work from their particular point of view. Guest Speaker: Eva Bares, Lecturer in Art History, UNC Asheville. FREE
Saturday, August 24 - 7pm
Interpretations of Absurdity - Okapi and Edwin Salas
Okapi (music) presents anecdotes reflecting life's mosaic, which involve confrontations with cryptic emotions and circumstances. Edwin Salas (movement) interprets these confrontations, embodying all the compromises and sacrifices woven into one's decisions.
Flyer in a Dark Chamber
A reimagining of the mythology of Lilith, told through spoken word, dance and music. Ten vignettes explore the stories of Lilith as the first wife of Adam, an empowered and emancipated woman, an outcast from Eden, the original vampire, the black madonna. Words by Alli Marshall, music by Elizabeth Lang/Auracene, movement by Sharon Cooper and Coco Palmer.
$10 for BMCM+AC members + students w/ID / $15 non-members
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