Herndon Gallery to host SOURCE exhibition

Beginning June 1

Antioch College will present SOURCE with artists Basia Irland, Dornith Doherty, and duo Amber Ginsburg and Joe Madrigal from June 1 through August 17 in Herndon Gallery, South Hall. Gallery hours are 1:00 to 4:00 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday.

An opening reception is from 7 to 9 p.m. Friday, June 1 in the gallery. The closing reception, featuring an artist talk with Amber Ginsburg and Joe Madrigal, is from 6 to 9 p.m. Friday, August 17, 2012.

SOURCE presents the work of four artists whose work is intimately involved with “the seed”, and includes the goal of environmental restoration, preservation of endangered genetic material, and uncovering histories. They work in a range of mediums, from photographs made with X-Ray cameras in seed banks across the world, to carving of ice books that use seeds as “text”, to an imaginative repurposing of World War I ceramic test bomb dummies into seed shakers. The work is poetic, performative, and profound.

The exhibition has been curated by Dennie Eagleson ‘71, creative director of the Herndon Gallery, and Sara Black, professor of visual arts at Antioch College.

About the artists

Doherty travels to international seed banks in the United States and England where she works with biologists to photograph materials using high power X-ray equipment. She then constructs photographic collages of these minute objects and prints them at a gigantic scale. The images to be displayed at the Herndon Gallery come from a series titled Archiving Eden, which has been shown extensively in national and international venues. Doherty is a recipient of grants from the Fulbright Foundation, the Japan Foundation, the United States Department of the Interior, the Indiana Arts Commission, and the Society for Contemporary Photography.

Irland identifies herself as a water and eco-artist. She has been traveling to different eco-systems in the United States and internationally to make projects that she describes as ice books. She works with stream biologists and botanists to identify seeds from endangered species, and then carves large ice books in collaboration with participating communities. Seeds are embedded in the book as text to be read before being launched into local streams or rivers. Irland’s work will be represented by photographic documentations of selected ice books from the hydrolibro series, and a video titled receding/reseeding. Irland has the honorary title of faculty scholar at the University of New Mexico, and has received grants and awards from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Research Foundation. She has also been a Fulbright senior research fellow and a Woodrow Wilson fellow, among many others.

Ginsburg and Madrigal have been collaborating on projects since 2007, working with the material and social properties of clay. Their participation in the exhibition will be from an installation that they call FLO(we)(u)R that will contain reproductions of World War II terra cotta dummy test bomb seed-shakers, a casting station, and a video of their production. The test bombs have been re-purposed to be seed distribution objects. This exhibition is a part of a larger exhibition that is being shown concurrently at the Soap Factory in Minneapolis, Minnesota.