Dangerous Waters: Three Solo Shows
Don Doe, Dylan Graham, and Sally Smart
Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY
September 1 - October 22, 2006
The Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University presents Dangerous Waters: Three Solo Shows. The exhibition brings together the work of Australian artist Sally Smart, Dutch artist Dylan Graham, and North American artist Don Doe, who share similar concerns about globalization and new identities. Their work is linked by an iconography of maritime themes that simultaneously engage the languages of Romanticism and popular culture.
“Using images of frigates in full sail, flags flying high in the wind, and swashbuckling pirates in colorful costumes, the works featured in Dangerous Waters concern themselves with a different world,” said Andrea Inselmann, curator of modern and contemporary art at the Johnson Museum. “These three artists revive the Romantic spirit seen in the current popular imagination, with pirates symbolizing the subversion of authority and the rejection of accepted social mores.”
SALLY SMART has created gallery-size installations for the past ten years using cutting, staining, sewing, stitching, collage, and photomontage. Her new installation at the Johnson Museum, The Exquisite Pirate (Coral Sea), is the most recent incarnation of a project the artist has been developing since 2004, which began with the question of whether or not women pirates existed, and then uses the image to upset our expectations of sexual roles. Sally Smart was in residence for five days to install her piece at the Johnson, and will speak about her work on Wednesday, August 30.
DYLAN GRAHAM addresses colonialism and immigration in intricate paper cutouts of frigates and maps, metaphors for conflict and refuge-seeking. Graham not only incorporates imagery culled from many folk traditions, his technique itself is modeled on the Mexican folk art papel picado, which in turn is a blend of Asian and Hispanic influences. Cutting paper to minute details involves painstaking craftsmanship and intensity appropriate for the loaded relationships that Dylan Graham illustrates in his installation, Conquests & Endeavors. Dylan Graham will speak about his work on Thursday, September 14.
In his installation of watercolors and paintings of women pirates, Heroines & Hellions, DON DOE critiques the male gaze while addressing complex issues related to authorship. Spoofing kitschy illustration, crossing the boundary between high art and pulp fiction, Don Doe’s work proposes a new sexual identity as it displays a bawdy sense of irony. At once sexist and feminist, real and surreal, unsettling and seductive, Don Doe’s fiercely independent pirate chicks are in control of the male gaze, empowering (most) female viewers while putting (some) male spectators on edge. Doe will speak about his work on Thursday, September 28.
HERBERT F. JOHNSON MUSEUM OF ART
Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853-4001
