December 15, 2015
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
San Francisco, CA–The Artist in Residence Program at Recology San Francisco will host an exhibition and reception for current artists-in-residence Jeremiah Barber, Alison Pebworth and student artist Robb Godshaw on Friday, January 22, from 5-10pm and Saturday, January 23, from 1-3pm. Additional viewing hours will be held on Tuesday, January 26, from 5-7pm, with a gallery walk-through with the artists at 6:00pm. This exhibition will be the culmination of four months of work by the artists who have scavenged materials from the dump to make art and promote recycling and reuse.
 Jeremiah Barber: Make Me Change MeDuring his residency, Jeremiah Barber has scavenged fragments of personal writing, turning the found text into poetry for performers to read in a series of videos. In each, a protagonist is positioned in a fantastic environment at a moment of transformation. Videos are non-narrative and spoken text is often enigmatic, but what is clear is that these are universally human moments of struggle and transcendence. Barber’s environments are fashioned from scavenged materials that range from the monumental to the absurd, and in some cases are lit with found, manipulated lighting that adds a theatrical element to the scenes. In addition to videos, Barber will present interactive sculptural pieces that incorporate mirrors and lenses to play with reflection and light. In these works viewers become the subjects, and like the characters in Barber’s videos, they too may experience moments of wonder and transformation. Barber received an MFA from Stanford University and a BFA from Columbia College in Chicago. He is the recipient of a Eureka Fellowship, a San Francisco Arts Commission Individual Artist Grant, and from 2005 to 2007 was an exhibiting member of Marina Abramovic’s independent performance group. He has exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, and in the Bay Area at the Mission Cultural Center, Southern Exposure, Headlands Center for the Arts, and The Lab. |
 Alison Pebworth: Innards and Upwards, A San Francisco WunderkammerUsing the Wunderkammer, or Wonder Cabinet, of the Renaissance as a point of departure, Alison Pebworth presents cultural artifacts, and bits of San Francisco history and architecture, in a large-scale installation with smaller sculptures. Her work brings the same fascination once held for the mysteries of nature and science to our discards, creating a spectacle of consumption from an ever-changing city. Pebworth presents seemingly disparate objects together, showing their interconnectedness and encouraging curiosity, a common element in Wunderkammer, but also takes inspiration from Dada and Fluxus, movements that embraced chance as a technique to break habitual ways of experiencing the world. A Hans Arp poem has been recreated by Pebworth using letters cut from hand-painted signs, and has served as a touchstone during her residency, and a patchwork quilt from found clothes acts as a visual diary of her daily finds, illustrating the chance nature of the scavenging experience. Pebworth is the recipient of Artist Grants from the San Francisco Arts Commission and the Center for Cultural Innovation and has been an artist-in-residence at numerous institutions including Ucross Foundation, Claremont, WY and the de Young Museum. She has exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Detroit, the Salt Lake Art Center, in Salt Lake City, and in the Bay Area at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Southern Exposure and Headlands Center for the Arts. |
 Robb Godshaw: Big-Screen DebrisWhile at Recology, Robb Godshaw has pursued an ongoing interest in lenses, which prior to the residency, he fabricated himself. His earlier Smaller and Upside Down project used lenses in an interactive sidewalk installation that invited pedestrians to look at each other through the glass. With their faces distorted to comic proportions, viewers were stripped of their urban cool and engaged with one another. For his work at Recology, Godshaw has scavenged large, ca. 1980s rear-projection TVs, using the lenses found within them to turn their screens into large-format microscopes. Godshaw will present a series of these TV microscopes, with each magnifying a small found object. Tiny mementos and keepsakes, lost in the enormity of the dump pile, appear larger than life, possibly reflecting their significance to those who once possessed them.Godshaw is currently completing final course work at Skyline College and will receive a BFA with a focus on mechatronic sculpture from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh in May. He has been an artist-in-residence at Autodesk in San Francisco, where he created the Hamster Wheel Standing Desk, and has exhibited at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. His Smaller and Upside Down project will be installed along Market Street for two years, beginning April, 2016. |
Admission is free and open to the public, all ages welcome, wheelchair accessible. About the Recology Artist in Residence Program |