EFA

Amze Emmons

Amze Emmons

Ark Royal, 2011. Two works on paper

Courtesy of the artist, Philadelphia, PA

Amze Emmons’ Ark Royal consists of drawings and prints that depict possible refuge flotilla derived from visual mash-ups of appropriated documentary material and field photography. The artist has drafted a visionary possibility to aid and protect those who are or will be displaced by climate disaster. Emmons was struck by the crossing points and similarities between refugee migrations and travel routes of consumer goods, which in turn led to the realization that shipping materials like pallets, crates, barrels, and plastic containers are the same used by refugees to build their boats and shelters. In Ark Royal, Emmons aims to call to our attention this complicated relationship by designing a combined means of nautical refuge and conveyance

Amze Emmons

Amze Emmons

Ark Royal, 2011. Two works on paper

Courtesy of the artist, Philadelphia, PA



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Haley Hughes

Thunder Bird Anal Flag: study for Totem / Shame Pole Figureheads ,Wagging Tongue Rainbow Devil: study for Totem / Shame Pole Figureheads, and Anger Bear Gold Machine: study for Totem / Shame Pole Figureheads, 2011. Totem figureheads constructed from plaster, tinfoil, feathers, paint, mixed media. 

Courtesy of the artist, Brooklyn, NY

Haley Hughes’ three sculptures Thunder Bird Anal Flag, Anger Bear Gold Machine, and Wagging Tongue Rainbow Devil are studies for totem/shame pole figureheads that will be mounted to boats later this summer as part of the Sea Worthy series of public excursions. Hughes’s figurehead totem poles use historic and contemporary symbolic imagery in order to create a new myth for our current tribe that is now, ostensibly, the world. Historically, a ship’s figurehead is a woman perched on the prow, representing the captain’s wife - her presence requires him to go down with his ship if the situation arises. Shame poles were erected by various tribes throughout North America as a way of telling the story of one clan or individual’s debt to another.  These poles would sit on the land of the tribe to which the debt was owed until it was paid.  Similarly, totem poles were erected to tell stories, but instead of declaring a debt, they conveyed a family’s history or an ancient myth. 



Sarah Julig

Sailing Without Seeing (high tide and one hour after), 2011. Wall sculpture made with found objects, wire, and wall drawings

Courtesy of the artist, Bronx, NY

Acknowledging a nearly extinct Polynesian system of navigation created thousands of years ago, Sarah Julig created a Marshallese stick chart using a variety of found urban remnants to represent the archipelago of New York City. Traditionally constructed with palm ribs bound by coconut fibers, with shells used to represent the islands being navigated, stick charts are not meant for in-transit navigation. Instead, they are to be used on land as instructional and mnemonic devices focusing on ocean swell patterns. Other explorers in Europe reused the same charts, however they are not universal: while a stick chart can represent any island, it is only readable by its creator. Sailing without Seeing most closely resembles the ‘Meddo’ chart, whose function is to indicate a group of islands relative to observable swells.

Jonathan Kaiser

Janet II, 2007. Functional boat constructed from salvaged plastic bags, lawn chairs, crutches and miscellany

Courtesy of the artist, Minneapolis, MN

Janet II is a functional boat constructed from repurposed lawn chairs, crutches, and plastic grocery bags. The vessel’s structure draws from two traditions of North American boating: the flat-bottomed pirogue common in the waterways of Louisiana, and the lightweight construction of the birch-bark canoe. Kaiser was a crew member of the Swimming Cities of Switchback Seas (also on view), when he was inspired to create a simpler, quieter vessel after floating on a driftwood log turned makeshift canoe. Janet II is named after the artist’s Grandmother.

Jonathan Kaiser

Janet II, 2007. Functional boat constructed from salvaged plastic bags, lawn chairs, crutches and miscellany

Courtesy of the artist, Minneapolis, MN

Marie Lorenz

Pontoon (Mill Basin), 2011. Print, hand-printed with Sumi ink on Kozo-Shi

Courtesy of the artist, Brooklyn, NY

Mill Basin is an ink print of a broken pontoon found on a beach near Mill Basin, Brooklyn. Marie Lorenz‘s work uses hand-built forms on an ambitious scale.  She considers her prints of washed-up debris to be collaborations with the tidal currents that moved, deconstructed, and reshaped the objects. After crashing a sailboat off the coast of Italy, Lorenz’s recent work has become increasingly focused on the story that objects have to tell. When she finds a suitable object, she prints it either on location or at her studio. This printing process is, in effect, a means of recording the story that an object tells about itself, about its own travels on the tide, and it also marks the moment when an object is no longer useable for its intended purpose.

Anne Percoco

Kilmer Shrines, 2008. 35 mm slides and projector

Courtesy of the artist, Jersey City, NJ

Anne Percoco’s Kilmer Shrines are a series constructed by the artist and maintained near storm drains in Piscataway New Jersey, which flow into the Raritan River and from there into the Atlantic Ocean. There were six main shrines and several minor ones, made from plastic, cement, and metal that mimic the materials used for drains. She invited the public to visit the shrines independently or on walking tours. These pilgrimages allowed visitors - who might otherwise ignore this space - to engage with their immediate surroundings. The tour focused on the overlay of geography, ecology, history and technology onto present day land use

Natalia Porter

Trajinera Xochitl, 2011. Scale model, wood with paint

Courtesy of the artist, New York, NY

The Trajinera is an emblematic Mexican boat that has existed for centuries. Today, it is still popular in Xochimilco, a rural part of southern Mexico City, best known for its canals and chinampas: remnants of what was an extensive lake and canal system that connected most of the settlements of the Valley of Mexico since Tenochtitlán (circa CE 1325-1521). A vestige of the region’s pre-Hispanic past and often referred to as "floating gardens," chinampas are used as a method of ancient Mesoamerican agriculture that is still productive today.

Starting with a boat building workshop, and through various seminars and discussions out on the boat, Xochitl will serve not only as a place of cultural exchange, but as a tool and platform for the discussion of different issues ranging from urban agriculture to Mexican immigration in New York. Xochitl aims to bring people together to begin asking questions of inclusion and exclusion as seen through heritage, culture and community, and to help ask larger questions of history, knowledge and perception.

Duke Riley

Be Good or Be Gone, 2008. Ink on canary paper

Courtesy of Magnan Metz Gallery, New York, NY

As an artist fascinated by maritime history and events around the waterways of New York City, Duke Riley’s signature style interweaves history with elements of fiction and myth to create allegorical commentary on contemporary sociopolitical issues. Employing maritime folk art techniques and carrying out large scale water-born interventions; his work addresses the cultural impact of overdevelopment of waterfront communities and the struggle of peripheral communities to maintain autonomy.

Tod Seelie

Raft Manhattan, 2008. Digital C-print

Courtesy of the artist, Brooklyn, NY

Raft Manhattan is documentation of a voyage from the summer of 2008, when a crew of artists led by the street artist Swoon built rafts from salvaged materials and traveled on the Hudson River from Troy to New York City. The crew stopped in various towns along the way to perform plays with multiple fictional versions of how the rafts and crew came to be, creating and unraveling its own myth as it travelled. The project culminated at a warehouse on the shore of the East River in Queens, where the rafts docked as part of a larger installation by Swoon. 

Reid Stowe

Cape Horn Whale Chart, 2009. GPS Chart on sail

Courtesy of the artist, Long Island City, NY 

The Cape Horn Whale Chart is comprised of a piece of sail and a GPS mapping chart. Both were used during Reid Stowe’s record-breaking 1,152 day journey on the high seas (“Longest Sea Voyage in History”). Recorded along the chart’s sides are Stowe’s daily latitude and longitude positions. The whale depicted on the chart was Stowe’s actual sailing course. As Stowe was making his way around Cape Horn, Chile, a friend noticed the shape forming on the GPS tracker. Inspired by this development, Stowe changed his course slightly to complete the full body of the whale. The process of creating art helped Stowe to survive the long periods of solitude on the sea as well as to capture a sense of the contemplation of nature and eternal realities that a life at sea offers.

Swimming Cities, ‘Oceans of Blood’

Pieces of a Living Art Project in Progress, 2011. Video, photographs, and ink on paper on wood panels

Courtesy of the artists, Brooklyn, NY

Swimming Cities is a diverse and evolving collaboration of artists, builders, and visionaries who come together each year to take on a new waterway. Originally united through common friendship and talent by the artist Swoon, the group traces its roots back to the raft project the "Miss Rockaway Armada." The community floats into towns to present an inspiring, interactive environment that encompasses art, sculpture, music and performance. This year’s project is their most ambitious yet, as they travel farther from home, and expand to include larger-scale collaborations. They have built a fleet of small sculptural, interlocking river crafts that form a floating island platform, called The Radial to be sailed down the Ganges River in India.  Coinciding with the festival of Diwali, they will arrive in Varanasi, said to be the oldest living city in the world. On its banks the boats will merge to form a floating theater, on which they will present a visual and musical event themed on the experiences of their adventure and the boundless historical & cultural richness of the land. For Sea Worthy, the crew have presented a sculptural installation gathered from found objects and borrowed iconographies that hint at this ongoing exploration.

Swimming Cities, ‘Oceans of Blood’

Radial, 2011. Photograph

Courtesy of the artists, Brooklyn, NY

Swimming Cities is a diverse and evolving collaboration of artists, builders, and visionaries who come together each year to take on a new waterway. Originally united through common friendship and talent by the artist Swoon, the group traces its roots back to the raft project the "Miss Rockaway Armada." The community floats into towns to present an inspiring, interactive environment that encompasses art, sculpture, music and performance. This year’s project is their most ambitious yet, as they travel farther from home, and expand to include larger-scale collaborations. They have built a fleet of small sculptural, interlocking river crafts that form a floating island platform, called The Radial to be sailed down the Ganges River in India.  Coinciding with the festival of Diwali, they will arrive in Varanasi, said to be the oldest living city in the world. On its banks the boats will merge to form a floating theater, on which they will present a visual and musical event themed on the experiences of their adventure and the boundless historical & cultural richness of the land. For Sea Worthy, the crew have presented a sculptural installation gathered from found objects and borrowed iconographies that hint at this ongoing exploration.

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Swimming Cities, ‘Oceans of Blood’

Mandala, 2011.  ink on paper

Courtesy of the artists, Brooklyn, NY

Swimming Cities is a diverse and evolving collaboration of artists, builders, and visionaries who come together each year to take on a new waterway. Originally united through common friendship and talent by the artist Swoon, the group traces its roots back to the raft project the "Miss Rockaway Armada." The community floats into towns to present an inspiring, interactive environment that encompasses art, sculpture, music and performance.  This year’s project is their most ambitious yet, as they travel farther from home, and expand to include larger-scale collaborations. They have built a fleet of small sculptural, interlocking river crafts that form a floating island platform, called The Radial to be sailed down the Ganges River in India.  Coinciding with the festival of Diwali, they will arrive in Varanasi, said to be the oldest living city in the world. On its banks the boats will merge to form a floating theater, on which they will present a visual and musical event themed on the experiences of their adventure and the boundless historical & cultural richness of the land. For Sea Worthy, the crew have presented a sculptural installation gathered from found objects and borrowed iconographies that hint at this ongoing exploration.

Swoon / Orien McNeill

Four preparatory drawings by Orien McNeill for Swoon’s Swimming cities of Switchback Sea, 2008. Digital prints, originally pen and ink drawings

Courtesy of Swoon, Brooklyn, NY

Swimming Cities of Switchback Sea by Swoon was a floating art performance, a project that took the efforts of seventy-five collaborators and a year to produce. The boats, or floating sculptures, were assembled and shipped to Troy, New York, stopping by various towns along the river for performances. These preparatory drawings for Swoon's Swimming Cities of Switchback Sea were made from no longer extant scale models, drawn by Orien McNeill.

Swoon / Orien McNeill

Four preparatory drawings by Orien McNeill for Swoon’s Swimming cities of Switchback Sea, 2008. Digital prints, originally pen and ink drawings

Courtesy of Swoon, Brooklyn, NY

Swimming Cities of Switchback Sea by Swoon was a floating art performance, a project that took the efforts of seventy-five collaborators and a year to produce. The boats, or floating sculptures, were assembled and shipped to Troy, New York, stopping by various towns along the river for performances. These preparatory drawings for Swoon's Swimming Cities of Switchback Sea were made from no longer extant scale models, drawn by Orien McNeill.

Swoon / Orien McNeill

Four preparatory drawings by Orien McNeill for Swoon’s Swimming cities of Switchback Sea, 2008. Digital prints, originally pen and ink drawings

Courtesy of Swoon, Brooklyn, NY

Swimming Cities of Switchback Sea by Swoon was a floating art performance, a project that took the efforts of seventy-five collaborators and a year to produce. The boats, or floating sculptures, were assembled and shipped to Troy, New York, stopping by various towns along the river for performances. These preparatory drawings for Swoon's Swimming Cities of Switchback Sea were made from no longer extant scale models, drawn by Orien McNeill.

Swoon / Orien McNeill

Four preparatory drawings by Orien McNeill for Swoon’s Swimming cities of Switchback Sea, 2008. Digital prints, originally pen and ink drawings

Courtesy of Swoon, Brooklyn, NY

Swimming Cities of Switchback Sea by Swoon was a floating art performance, a project that took the efforts of seventy-five collaborators and a year to produce. The boats, or floating sculptures, were assembled and shipped to Troy, New York, stopping by various towns along the river for performances. These preparatory drawings for Swoon's Swimming Cities of Switchback Sea were made from no longer extant scale models, drawn by Orien McNeill.

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Sea Worthy

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Rachel Bacon

Looking for a Safe Haven, 2011. 1:1 scale model of a raft used by a Cuban immigrant constructed from paper

Courtesy of the artist, The Hague, Netherlands

 The title of Rachel Bacon’s work, Looking for a Safe Haven, refers to the area of Guantanamo Bay where the US Coast Guard held Cuban rafters.  Fabricated out of paper, the object is a 1:1 scale model of a home-made raft used by one Cuban immigrant in his trip across the sea to the United States in 2010.  This paper raft is a reflection of the courage and desperation of the individuals willing to make such a risky journey, and an expression of shared recognition of vulnerability and loss. Bacon states “the raft is a bridge into the unknown; to possible death, or rebirth, and to a new country, leaving the old one behind….”

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Natalia Porter

Trajinera Xochitl, 2011

Wood with paint

9 x 24 x 7 inches

Courtesy of the Natalia Porter, New York, NY

Natalia Porter

Trajinera Xochitl, 2011

Laser etched wood

9 ½ x 15 inches

Courtesy of the Natalia Porter, New York, NY

 The Trajinera is an emblematic Mexican boat that has existed for centuries. Today, it is still popular in Xochimilco, a rural part of southern Mexico City, best known for its canals and chinampas: remnants of what was an extensive lake and canal system that connected most of the settlements of the Valley of Mexico since Tenochtitlán (circa CE 1325-1521). A vestige of the region’s pre-Hispanic past and often referred to as "floating gardens," chinampas are used as a method of ancient Mesoamerican agriculture that is still productive today.

 Starting with a boat building workshop, and through various seminars and discussions out on the boat, Xochitl will serve not only as a place of cultural exchange, but as a tool and platform for the discussion of different issues ranging from urban agriculture to Mexican immigration in New York. Xochitl aims to bring people together to begin asking questions of inclusion and exclusion as seen through heritage, culture and community, and to help ask larger questions of history, knowledge and perception.

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Jason Gandy

Atixipdio, 2010

Mixed Media

45 x 24 ½ x 13 inches

Courtesy of Jason Gandy, Brooklyn, NY

 Atixipdio is the latest piece in Jason Gandy’s ATIXIP series. Over the course of many years, Gandy transformed the attic of his Brooklyn rental apartment into the likeness of a large empty ship. Inside, the artist conducted multiple performances as “Atixipman,” wearing a hand-made armor-like suit constructed from thousands of overlapping maple and bamboo plates. The wooden sculpture Atixipdio commemorates the final performance of Atixipman inside his ‘attic-ship’ before the building was sold and subsequently gutted. The static work contains a miniature kinetic world, brought to motion with various power sources including pendulums, magnets, and solar power. By peering through the sculpture’s porthole, the viewer becomes immersed in a private world of distorted perspectives, optical illusions, and varying mechanics.

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Ciaerán Ó Dochartaigh

Sub-Arctic Expedition, 2010-2011

Video

Courtesy of Ciaerán Ó Dochartaigh, London, UK

The footage in Ciarán Ó Dochartaigh’s Sub-Arctic Installation – Irish Canadian Transatlantic Site-Specific Piece was shot in two parts, the first made in Ireland and the second in Canada.  In Ireland, Ó Dochartaigh filmed at the mountain lake Lough Fad, where fish are purported to be the Arctic Char, a rare post-glacial colonizer – so rare, in fact, that this claim has never been proven.  Ó Dochartaigh challenges the story by embarking on a fishing trip.  The video was shot onboard a hybrid of traditional Irish and Canadian canoes, which had been adapted for fishing with the addition of trawling accessories. It depicts the crew re-enacting a voyage of discovery as a staged Arctic expedition. The second part of the work is footage of the importation of a paper boat, folded into a suitcase, that the artist reconstituted at The Forks in Winnipeg, Canada, a site with a long and storied history of industrial and aboriginal tribal importance, with a number of interesting fish stories of its own.

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Anne Percoco                                                                                              

Kilmer Shrines, 2008 

Courtesy of the artist, Jersey City, NJ

Anne Percoco’s Kilmer Shrines are a series constructed by the artist and maintained near storm drains in Piscataway New Jersey, which flow into the Raritan River and from there into the Atlantic Ocean. There were six main shrines and several minor ones, made from plastic, cement, and metal that mimic the materials used for drains. She invited the public to visit the shrines independently or on walking tours. These pilgrimages allowed visitors - who might otherwise ignore this space - to engage with their immediate surroundings. The tour focused on the overlay of geography, ecology, history and technology onto present day land use. 

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Swoon

Courtesy of Swoon, Brooklyn, NY

Swimming Cities

Pieces of Living Art Project in Progress, 2011

Video, Photographs, and ink on paper on wood panels

48 x 48 x 72 inches

Courtesy of Ben Mortimer and Marin Tockman, Brooklyn, NY

Swimming Cities is a diverse and evolving collaboration of artists, builders, and visionaries who come together each year to take on a new waterway. Originally united through common friendship and talent by the artist Swoon, the group traces its roots back to the raft project the "Miss Rockaway Armada." The community floats into towns to present an inspiring, interactive environment that encompasses art, sculpture, music and performance.

This year’s project is their most ambitious yet, as they travel farther from home, and expand to include larger-scale collaborations. They have built a fleet of small sculptural, interlocking river crafts that form a floating island platform, called The Radial to be sailed down the Ganges River in India.  Coinciding with the festival of Diwali, they will arrive in Varanasi, said to be the oldest living city in the world. On its banks the boats will merge to form a floating theater, on which they will present a visual and musical event themed on the experiences of their adventure and the boundless historical & cultural richness of the land. For Sea Worthy, the crew have presented a sculptural installation gathered from found objects and borrowed iconographies that hint at this ongoing exploration

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Richard Haley

Pre-enactment at Being Lost at Sea: Attempting to Sink with

the Setting Sun (attempts 5 & 6), 2007

6 minute 58 second video loop and one photo

Photo: 12 x 18 inches

Courtesy of Richard Haley, Birmingham, MI

Pre-Enactment of Being Lost at Sea (attempts 5 & 6) seeks to exaggerate the polarities of humankind’s existence and relationship with the sea. Richard Haley paddles a handmade wood boat with two holes in the bottom fitted with threaded tubes and caps. He attempts, several times, to sink the boat at the same rate as the setting sun in a small pond. Haley alludes to the romantic notion of man being lost at sea and his attempts to conquer nature. In reality, Haley’s “sea,” is a man-made pond located in a business park in the Sacramento Valley, miles from the open water.

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George Boorujy

New York Pelagic (example) 2011

Glass Bottle, pencil on paper, and questionnaire

Bottle: 14 inch H bottle, drawings: 8 x 11 inches

Courtesy of George Boorjuy, Brooklyn, NY

New York Pelagic is a project, which aims to highlight our impact on the ocean and its wildlife. The project involves placing original drawings of pelagic (open ocean) birds in bottles and launching them into New York waterways. A questionnaire is included for the would-be recipient. Boorujy’s series brings attention to the vast amount of detritus constantly being tossed into the water.  Discarded plastic has a grave impact on oceans and animals, reflected in the health of pelagic birds that consume a lethal variety and quantity of man-made materials. These birds occupy expanses of oceanic space, but our lack of knowledge of these zones, the artist tells us, belies how much we affect them.

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Sea Worthy

Installation View Sea Worthy

Michael Arcega

Michael Arcega

Lexical borrowing: saw horse by the sea shore - understanding Manifest Destiny, 2011 . Table and scaled models constructed from mat board, glue, wood, paracord, rope, found bottles, & James River water

Courtesy of the artist and Marx & Zavaterro, San Francisco, CA

In Lexical borrowing: saw horse by the sea shore - understanding Manifest Destiny, Michael Arcega uses the contact languages of Pidgin and Creole as a metaphor for intercultural navigation. Loosely imitating Lewis & Clark's expedition, Arcega will navigate his boat Baby, along bodies of water across the United States throughout the summer of 2011. Arcega fabricated Baby as a hybrid construction that combines a tandem Bangka (Pacific outrigger canoe) derived from a mutation of a single plyak (plywood kayak- 50's era) and the Klepper canoe design (collapsible German canoe company-WWII era). On display are objects, in addition to notes and paintings the artist will send to EFA as a record of his travels- a reference to the correspondences found between Lewis & Clark and Thomas Jefferson, at Jefferson's home in Monticello. The first leg of the journey occurred on May 21, 2011 from Richmond, Virginia (seat of the Confederacy) and concluded near Jamestown, Virginia (the first successful British colony). The object displayed on the bottom shelf is a jury-rigged pontoon, which Arcega built to aid an American canoe during an emergency on said voyage.



blachlyshaw



Jimbo Blachly and Lytle Shaw

Jimbo Blachly and Lytle Shaw; Editors: Chadwick Family Papers

Shipwreck Memorial (Lady Hobart), 2010. Ink, paper, watercolor, and wood

Courtesy of the artists and Winkleman Gallery, New York, NY

Jimbo Blachly & Lytle Shaw have contributed several objects from their ongoing explorations of the Chadwick Family’s archive – in this case, sharing articles from the family’s extensive nautical collections. Shipwreck Memorials are relief sculptures depicting the moment after a vessel has been claimed by the sea. The affixed brass plaques indicate the ship’s name, the circumstances of the disaster, and a suggestion of the attitude one might adopt in mourning its loss. The accompanying hand-tinted coloring book pages are maritime sections from a larger collection titled Chadwick’s Illustrated History. Finally, the artists have included a burnt ship-in-a-bottle memorial dedicated to family vessels destroyed in blazes.



Jimbo Blachly and Lytle Shaw



Jimbo Blachly and Lytle Shaw

Jimbo Blachly and Lytle Shaw; Editors: Chadwick Family Papers

Shipwreck Memorial (Grey’s Weazal), 2010. Ink, paper, watercolor, wood and fabric

Courtesy the artists and Winkleman Gallery, New York, NY

Jimbo Blachly & Lytle Shaw have contributed several objects from their ongoing explorations of the Chadwick Family’s archive – in this case, sharing articles from the family’s extensive nautical collections. Shipwreck Memorials are relief sculptures depicting the moment after a vessel has been claimed by the sea. The affixed brass plaques indicate the ship’s name, the circumstances of the disaster, and a suggestion of the attitude one might adopt in mourning its loss. The accompanying hand-tinted coloring book pages are maritime sections from a larger collection titled Chadwick’s Illustrated History. Finally, the artists have included a burnt ship-in-a-bottle memorial dedicated to family vessels destroyed in blazes.



George Boorujy

George Boorujy

Matt Bua

Matt Bua

Sink or Swim Floating Museum Plan, 2011. Ink on paper

Courtesy of the artist, Catskill, NY

Matt Bua creates small-scale improvised buildings, hand-built people’s museums and roadside attractions; his recent work takes form in fantastical spaces to redefine and re-imagine found objects. Bua’s poster/drawing Sink or Swim was part of a larger site-specific work that was installed at the stern of a capsized boat on the side of the road in Woodstock, New York and acted as a public attraction/information kiosk. Bua covered the boat with posters detailing themes related to Henry Hudson’s journey. Sink or Swim promotes a floating catch-all museum dedicated to amazing feats of paddling and long distance sailing.



Adriane Colburn

Adriane Colburn in collaboration with Stephan von Muehlen

Ice Breaker / Open Water, 2009. Video and object constructed of wood and paint

Courtesy of the artist, San Francisco, CA

 Adriane Colburn’s Icebreaker is a compilation of footage, scientific data and still images collected onboard the USCG ship The Healy. In its travels, The Healy was charged both with conducting groundbreaking science and supporting efforts to ratify the international Law of the Sea treaty- the US quest to lay claim over areas of the Arctic Ocean and the wealth of oil and gas held captive there.

This body of work, shown here as projected video, and also in a viewing object, looks at the ways that data is collected in the remote environment of the Arctic, the effects on ecosystems due to climate change and the relationships between scientific exploration and exploitation. In a time when there are few areas of the planet yet untamed or unknown, Colburn attempts to highlight the conflict of how our efforts to discover, understand, and protect our environments are also altering and taming them. 



Heather Dewey-Hagborg and Thomas Dexter

Heather Dewey-Hagborg and Thomas Dexter

Hydrophony, 2010-2011. Sound and custom speakers

Courtesy of the artists, Brooklyn, NY

In Hydrophony, Heather Dewey- Hagborg and Thomas Dexter offer visitors to the gallery the opportunity to experience the world of sound that exists underneath New York City’s rivers with a sound installation consisting of underwater field recordings. In this space, the above ground urban sounds of cars, pedestrians and construction are replaced with those of schools of fish, motorboats, and sea animals moving through seaweed. Hydrophony invites the listeners to expand their familiar understanding of their waterways, and to reconsider the boundaries between the musical/intentional and the incidental.



Jason Gandy

Jason Gandy

Atixipdio, 2010

Mixed Media

45 x 24 ½ x 13 inches

Courtesy of Jason Gandy, Brooklyn, NY

 Atixipdio is the latest piece in Jason Gandy’s ATIXIP series. Over the course of many years, Gandy transformed the attic of his Brooklyn rental apartment into the likeness of a large empty ship. Inside, the artist conducted multiple performances as “Atixipman,” wearing a hand-made armor-like suit constructed from thousands of overlapping maple and bamboo plates. The wooden sculpture Atixipdio commemorates the final performance of Atixipman inside his ‘attic-ship’ before the building was sold and subsequently gutted. The static work contains a miniature kinetic world, brought to motion with various power sources including pendulums, magnets, and solar power. By peering through the sculpture’s porthole, the viewer becomes immersed in a private world of distorted perspectives, optical illusions, and varying mechanics.



Ciarán Ó Dochartaigh

Ciarán Ó Dochartaigh

Sub-Arctic Expedition, 2010-2011. Video

Courtesy of the artist, London, UK

The footage in Ciarán Ó Dochartaigh’s Sub-Arctic Installation – Irish Canadian Transatlantic Site-Specific Piece was shot in two parts, the first made in Ireland and the second in Canada.  In Ireland, Ó Dochartaigh filmed at the mountain lake Lough Fad, where fish are purported to be the Arctic Char, a rare post-glacial colonizer – so rare, in fact, that this claim has never been proven.  Ó Dochartaigh challenges the story by embarking on a fishing trip.  The video was shot onboard a hybrid of traditional Irish and Canadian canoes, which had been adapted for fishing with the addition of trawling accessories. It depicts the crew re-enacting a voyage of discovery as a staged Arctic expedition. The second part of the work is footage of the importation of a paper boat, folded into a suitcase, that the artist reconstituted at The Forks in Winnipeg, Canada, a site with a long and storied history of industrial and aboriginal tribal importance, with a number of interesting fish stories of its own.





Haley Hughes

Haley Hughes

Thunder Bird Anal Flag: study for Totem / Shame Pole Figureheads ,Wagging Tongue Rainbow Devil: study for Totem / Shame Pole Figureheads, and Anger Bear Gold Machine: study for Totem / Shame Pole Figureheads, 2011. Totem figureheads constructed from plaster, tinfoil, feathers, paint, mixed media. 

Courtesy of the artist, Brooklyn, NY

Haley Hughes’ three sculptures Thunder Bird Anal Flag, Anger Bear Gold Machine, and Wagging Tongue Rainbow Devil are studies for totem/shame pole figureheads that will be mounted to boats later this summer as part of the Sea Worthy series of public excursions. Hughes’s figurehead totem poles use historic and contemporary symbolic imagery in order to create a new myth for our current tribe that is now, ostensibly, the world. Historically, a ship’s figurehead is a woman perched on the prow, representing the captain’s wife - her presence requires him to go down with his ship if the situation arises. Shame poles were erected by various tribes throughout North America as a way of telling the story of one clan or individual’s debt to another.  These poles would sit on the land of the tribe to which the debt was owed until it was paid.  Similarly, totem poles were erected to tell stories, but instead of declaring a debt, they conveyed a family’s history or an ancient myth. 





Haley Hughes

Kon Tiki Screening

Kon Tiki Screening

Kon Tiki Screening

Installation View Sea Worthy

Installation View Sea Worthy