Curator

SUGs Directors: Kaitlyn Wittig, Stephanie Cristello, Al Porto, Rob Bos, Kevin Dorla

Contributing Artists

Beth Hetland, Isabella Kendrick, Elliot Mickleberg, Kayla Parker, Cody Tumblin, Cameron Welch

Exhibition Statement as Preserved in the SUGS/SITE Archives:

The SUGs Directors are pleased to present Take Away, an exhibition featuring a wide variety of work in the form of multiples and editions that visitors are invited to freely interact with, dispense and disperse. Take Away critically challenges how seven artists have interpreted ways we interact with work, as the gallery becomes a site for distribution. Though separate in their respective practices, these artists work together to evoke a spirit of change in the gallery. Working between intersections of minimalism and Classical archetypes, Cody Tumblin’s formal investigations have been transformed into malleable offset print stacks, resembling a large mosaic on the floor that invites viewers to rearrange and remove parts of the whole to create another visual composition. The “stack” is an often used trope in the idea of the contemporary take away, but also acts as way to question use, value, and quality. Kayl Parker’s Ranch also participates in this dialogue though a two-part floor and wall piece that posits two idyllic seeming landscapes, as an antecedent to what constitutes a “well-made” photograph. Similarly questioning the value of an artist’s edition are Isabella Kendrick and Elliot Mickelburgh’s collaborative piece that makes clever use of children’s drawing practices – enforced by Kendrick’s signed and numbered genetic clones of a common houseplant. Perhaps we understand the take away as an invitation to a pocket-sized conversation we hold onto for later, such as in Beth Hetland’s piece. however, the freeness of interaction in this exhibition is not always so clear, the take away not necessarily carefree, or easy. As Cameron Welch’s piece suggests, the take away may not travel outside the gallery, and if it does, it caries its own consequences. Where these Take Away artists intercde has to do with the invariable lifespan of the work – some elements may expire more quickly than others whereby fostering a dialogue between the fixed and the mutable speaks tot he state of gallery at the very moment.