HOME SCHOOL: Conditions for an Unfinished Work of Mourning: Wretched Yew - A Conversation with artist Dawn Roe and Amy Galpin + Lisa Zaher
Thursday October 29th, 7pm (EST)

***All events are open to everyone - we have a suggested $5 - $20 pay what you can option, as well as free.***

This event is co-partnered with our friends at SIX FEET

Join us as we host a dynamic discussion with the artist Dawn Roe, curator Amy Galpin, and professor/writer Lisa Zaher as they discuss the issues and processes embedded in the exhibition at Tracey Morgan Gallery, which opens October 2, and runs through November 11.

Produced over a two year period, Wretched Yew centers the Taxus brevifolia genus of yew tree and its location in the Pacific Northwest as its subject in relation to the artist’s past experience in the region. Having spent her formative years in Portland, Oregon throughout the 1990’s in what she describes as a “tumultuous time when the pervasive sight of clear cut hillsides served as the visual backdrop to personal struggles with addiction, depression, and loss,” Roe found an in-depth engagement with the cultural and ecological legacy of this species provided a provocative framework for thinking through ongoing cycles of neglect. Upon the “discovery of taxol, an anticancer agent from the tissues of Pacific yew, the species received\\] much attention. \\[Prior to this, Pacific yew was indiscriminately removed during logging operations\\] with no provision for regeneration or consideration of the effects on the population as a whole.” Works in the exhibition connect the complex narratives and mythological associations of the yew tree - known as a symbol of death and regeneration - to Roe’s ongoing concerns with the limitations of photographic modes of re-presentation as reliable artifacts of the past. (from the TMG press release)

If you are unable to visit the exhibition in person, we recommend you view the single-channel video in advance of this talk as the piece is a foundational component to the exhibition and will not be screened during the program. Viewing with headphone is recommended. The video can be accessed here:
https://vimeo.com/339586118

ABOUT DAWN ROE

Dawn is Professor of Studio Art in the Rollins College Department of Art & Art History. She received an MFA from Illinois State University in 2005 and a BFA from Marylhurst University in 2002. Her work has been exhibited at venues including The Frost Art Museum, Miami, FL; ISU University Galleries, Normal, IL; The Orlando Museum of Art, Orlando, FL; Newspace Center for Photography, Portland, OR; The White Box at The University of Oregon, Portland, OR; and Screen Space Gallery, Melbourne, VIC, Australia. Roe is the recipient of awards and fellowships from The United Arts of Central Florida, Nau Côclea Centre for Contemporary Creation, The Hambidge Center for the Creative Arts & Sciences, The Visual Arts Centre at LaTrobe University, and the Alden B. Dow Creativity Center. Her work and writing has been featured in print and web-based journals including Lenscratch, Aint-Bad, The Detroit Center for Contemporary Photography, Oxford American, fototazo, and the Routledge print journal, photographies. A two-year public art commission from the Broward County Division of Cultural Affairs resulted in the production of a suite of artworks for the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport in Florida.

ABOUT AMY GALPIN

Amy is the Chief Curator of the Frost Art Museum at Florida International University in Miami, Florida. She has previously served as the Curator of Cornell Fine Arts Museum at Rollins College and the Associate Curator, Art of the Americas, at the San Diego Museum of Art. Her exhibitions include Alfredo Ramos Martinez: Picturing Mexico in California at the Pasadena Museum of Art and Translation Revolution: U.S. Artists Interpret Mexican Muralism at the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago. In 2010, she worked with the Museum of Contemporary San Diego, the Timken Museum of Art, and the San Diego Museum of Art on an exhibition and publication titled, Behold, America! Art of the United States from Three San Diego Museums. At both the Frost and at the Cornell, Galpin curated numerous group and solo exhibitions of contemporary art including Displacement: Symbols and Journeys, Cut: Abstraction in the U.S. from the 1970s to the Present, and solo projects with Patrick Martinez and Jess T. Dugan, among others.

ABOUT LISA ZAHER

Lisa is Assistant Professor, Adjunct at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her research and teaching focuses on modern and contemporary art history with an emphasis on photographic media, moving-image arts and digital media practices. Zaher received her Ph.D. in Art History from the University of Chicago in 2013, and an M.A. from the Courtauld Institute of Art. Her book manuscript, Hollis Frampton: By Mind and Hand, which situates Frampton’s works and theoretical writings within the histories of fine art, photography, film and computational media, underscores the historiographical ambitions of Frampton’s practice through his development of a theory of embodied technological images. Additional works in progress include an edited collection of writings by and about the American multi-media artist, Patrick Clancy, and an edited collection, with Christine Mehring, on the German Fluxus artist, Wolf Vostell. She is a lead researcher on the project The Sites of the Virtual, organized by the University of Paris III, the University of Girona and the University of Chicago. Her writing has appeared in the Oxford Art Journal, Rethinking Marxism, Open Set, and Shifter.