THE BRIDGE CLUB
STILL
Reception & Performance: January 11, 2013 6 – 8pm
On Exhibit through February 16, 2013.
XXXXXXX
This collection of photographs connects the spaces, objects and roles occupied by The Bridge Club’s temporal performance works. Each still offers intimate access to the hypnotic and beguiling worlds they create. Through intentionally isolating and freezing these fleeting moments the artists allow for an alternative experience of their work to draw new connections through time, space and narrative action.
The Bridge Club is a contemporary visual and performance art collaborative consisting of artists Annie Strader, Christine Owen, Emily Bivens and Julie Wills. The Bridge Club’s interdisciplinary installation, video, live performance and digital media works are site- and context- specific, and each work investigates specific local histories, populations, contexts, stereotypes, expectations and conflicts. Performances and installations have taken place in both traditional and nontraditional venues, incorporating and responding to sites such as a hotel room, a city bus or an abandoned storefront in addition to the traditional gallery or museum space.
An anonymous collective persona inhabits each of The Bridge Club’s works, with each member artist donning wigs, shoes and a variety of carefully selected garments that relate directly to the site and concept of a specific work. The collective presence of the four costumed member artists lends an unsettling normative air to odd or uncomfortable situations, while costuming and object choices create a historical ambiguity of era that addresses change and continuity of gender and interpersonal histories, roles, expectations and behaviors.
The Bridge Club’s work has been exhibited at FLUX night 2012, Atlanta, GA; ‘Off the Strip,’ a new genres festival organized by the Contemporary Arts Center in Las Vegas, NV; ‘Low Lives 2,’ an exhibition of live performance works broadcast via the internet and projected at art museums around the U.S.; Lawndale Art Center, Houston, TX; 1708 Gallery, Richmond, VA; IDEA space, Colorado Springs, CO and SPACES Gallery, Cleveland, OH and they received a Visual Artist Network Residency Grant in 2009. Most recently they received the IDEA fund Grant to support their project “The Trailer” which will launch in Houston in March 2013.
projects
CAVE DWELLER
NINA RIZZO
Jan 11 – Feb 16, 2013
Rizzo’s paintings are equal part fact and fiction. Using her direct experience with a place, event or object as a catalyst, she abstracts, invents and explores new realities in painted space and form. Rizzo imagines places unseen or hybrid spaces, creating a world that is full of wonder and possibility. Her use of exaggerated color, fluid brush strokes, and spatial ambiguities reveal sensual environments where interiors and exteriors collide and our notion of reality is questioned.
Nina received her MFA from the University of Texas at Austin, TX and has since completed residencies at the Association for Icelandic Visual Artists [Reykjavik, Iceland], Chateau de La Napoupe [La Napoule, France], Stonehouse Residency for the Contemporary Arts [Miramonte, California], and the Jentel Foundation [Banner, Wyoming]. Her work has been exhibited at Malin Kong, Megumi Ogita Gallery [Tokyo, Japan] & Linda Warren Gallery [Chicago, Il] and Skew Gallery [Calgary, AB, Canada]. She currently works as a professor at Northern Illinois University School of Art [DeKalb, Illinois].
