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Opening Reception – Alison Gates & Colin Matthes
Join Alison Gates, Colin Matthes, and Wisconsin Academy staff to celebrate the opening of the exhibitions Points of Departure and The Days Go By Like Wildness at the James Watrous Gallery. These paired solo exhibits will be on view from April 28, 2023 through July 23, 2023.
Artists’ talks begin at 7:00 p.m.
Free and open to the public. Light refreshments available. Masks recommended.
Alison Gates works primarily in textiles, using knitting and embroidery to explore issues of gender, climate change, and the way language and cultural traditions shift over time, or in different contexts. Adding subtly embroidered words to printed textiles, she creates a quiet disturbance, a whisper of new meaning that shifts the pattern in unexpected directions. This exhibition will also include her Global Warming series of wool bikinis, hand-knitted using traditional patterns from northern Europe. These beautifully made bikinis use humor to raise a serious question. As the climate warms, what will happen to these knitting traditions, which are such important markers of cultural identity? Will they disappear like other traditions and skills that no longer suit the local climate, or evolve to suit the changing conditions?
Colin Matthes’ art is rooted in improvisation and resourcefulness. As a young man growing up in a remote, rural area, Matthes learned to work with whatever was at hand. In 2011, living on Ireland’s desolate west coast, he began cataloguing the skills and information he’d need to survive without outside help. This inspired Matthes’ ongoing series of “Essential Knowledge” drawings, which cover everything from surviving shark and grizzly attacks or escaping a riptide to reading body language and the safe way to move a heavy object. More recently he has been drawing without an agenda, using the quiet hours after his children’s bedtime to let his pencil or brush roam freely with his imagination. With this unfettered approach, Matthes finds that (in his young daughter’s words) “the days go by like wildness.”
Event Links
Website: https://go.evvnt.com/1605843-0
