ON VIEW:
WED + THU + FRI 4-7pm
SUN 1-3pm
Inflatable Air-dancers, a popular promotional tool for retail outlets, comically flap around to draw the attention of passersby and beckon them towards the products or services that they promote. These Air-dancers are emblazoned with a national call to work together and turn the page on a difficult time. They flap pathetically, yet with hope, outside the gallery, creating a conflicting feeling of political possibility and potential absurdity.
“Exercise Your Rights” (22 min.) video demonstrating a series of exercises dutifully carried out over Zoom between the UK & US, to “evoke a positive experience in electoral democracy.” Watch here or on the porch of 229 N. Gilbert during gallery hours.
Davin Watne and Dawn Woolley work collaboratively, under the name Hard Stop, to produce art interventions that question the information we receive and notions of truth in contemporary society. Drawing from current affairs in the UK and US, we examine the rhetoric of mass-media. Through an exchange of images & ideas we explore how images communicate, persuade, and seduce.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Dawn Woolley is an artist and research fellow at Leeds Arts University. Her practice encompasses photography, video, installation and performance. She uses photographs of objects and people to question issues of artificiality and idealisation. Her research examines the relation between people and objects, and the impact that images have as producers and disseminators of social values.
Woolley completed an MA in Photography (2008) and PhD by project in Fine Art (2017) at the Royal College of Art. Recent exhibitions include; “Self/Selfie” Ballarat International Foto Biennale, Australia (2017), “Le Féminin” Circulation(s), Arles (2017), “From Selfie to Self-Expression” Saatchi Gallery, London (2017) and “Basically. Forever” Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography (2014). Solo exhibitions include; “Consumed: Stilled Lives” Blyth Gallery, London (2018), Ffotogallery, Cardiff (2018), Ruskin Gallery, Cambridge (2017), and Dyson Gallery, London (2016); “Visual Pleasure”, Hippolyte Photography Gallery, Helsinki, Finland (2013), Vilniaus Fotografijos Galerija, Lithuania (2012) and Ffotogallery, Cardiff (2011). Her publication Consuming the Body: Capitalism, Social Media and Commodification will be published by I. B. Tauris in 2019.
Davin Watne is interested in the aesthetics of power, authority and desire as constructed by governing systems. This awareness pushes him to develop visual means of resistance. He communicates images and experiences that are visceral and symbolic in nature, ultimately creating new visual lexicons that combat the prevailing modes of signification.
Watne is based in Kansas City with an established record of professional achievement. He received his BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute in 1994 and his MFA at Maryland Institute College of Art in 2013. He has been awarded the Charlotte Street Foundation Award, ArtsKC Inspiration Grant, Avenue of Arts Municipal Arts Grant, Art in the Loop Public Arts Grant and is a former resident of the Studios Inc. Residency Program. Davin is a full-time lecturer at University of Missouri Kansas City, where he teaches Painting and Drawing. Davin is also the head curator and director of the UMKC Gallery of Art.