SEPTEMBER 2 - OCTOBER 14, 2023
RECEPTION: SEPTEMBER 9, 2023, 4-6PM
ARTIST TALK: SEPTEMBER 30, 11AM
Blue McRight’s daily practice of picking up and collecting plastic pollution is the foundational action from which she has created the works in her new exhibition, Gather. As a long-time scuba diver, she has witnessed the organic processes of the underwater world, life and death, gender fluidity, reproduction and communication. Her sculpture is made of salvaged plastic straws, rope and hairbands, but also former instruments of death such as fishing nets, fish and crab traps and bait baskets. She assembles these materials into flowing, intertwined conglomerates that, when suspended from the ceiling, give the impression of floating within a tall kelp forest. Other forms resemble colorful, spikey, sea anemones attached to the wall. She states, “while diving, I am always fascinated by wildly encrusted mooring blocks, ropes, and a huge array of other surfaces whose takeover by intricate colonies of sea life is underway.” Shakespeare describes the process as “a sea change into something rich and strange.” The netting she employs, in some cases actual fishing net, and in others plastic mesh wrapping from Christmas trees or small cheese wheels, recalls the clear bodies of many marine species whose interiors are visible. Her re-imagining and repurposing of these materials “asks us to confront the possibilities of what we thoughtlessly discard, giving agency to the rejected as it assumes space in the realm of the cultural dialogue.”