Newest Features
After hiatus, Big Red & Shiny is pleased to continue Inside/Out, our artist-in-residence series. Inside/Out last ran during 2012 through 2013, and offered a space in which artists could discuss their studio practice and work. In this new iteration, a guest artist in residence is invited to write about their ideas, research, and challenges, and publish their inspirations, obsessions, creative experiences, and insights. Unlike an ‘Open Studio’ format, which is often predicated on potential sales, BR&S wants to provide the artist-in-residence with an outlet to place their practice in a more public realm, offering an…
Art in Service: a conversation between Leah Triplett Harrington of BR&S, Kate Gilbert of Now + There, and Maggie Cavallo of Alter Projects Last month, the City of Boston launched Boston Creates, its first-ever cultural plan. The ten-year plan aspires to enable all of its citizens to “participate and take pride in the vibrant cultural life to be found in every corner of the city.” Simultaneously, the City is beginning its second round of Boston AIR projects, putting socially-engaged artists in residency with government offices and agencies. As citizens engaged in contemporary…
When Jed Speare died earlier this spring, Boston’s experimental arts community lost a pioneering artist, a tenacious advocate, a dear colleague, and an even more dear friend. Jed was best known for his work as a composer and sound artist, but his work was truly multidisciplinary, encompassing video, installation, and performance. He was just 62 years old at the time of his death and in spite of the obstacles and frustrations of illness, he was still working on a variety of artistic projects. I first met Jed before a concert that I…
In Marguerite Yourcenar’s essay, “That Mighty Sculptor, Time,” she speaks of the “involuntary beauty” of ruined sculpture from the ancient past: …statues so thoroughly shattered that out of the debris a new work of art is born: a naked foot unforgettably resting on a stone: a candid hand; a bent knee which contains all the speed of the foot race; a torso which has no face to prevent us from loving it; a breast or genitals in which we recognize more fully than ever the form of a fruit or a flower;…
I am viewing Providence College–Galleries’ inaugural digital exhibition, Geographically Indeterminate Fantasies, curated by Art F City, and on view in its “IRL” physical form through July 2nd at GRIN, from a window seat of an Amtrak train. The railroad, a modern signifier of changing notions of physical and cultural fluidity, is a fitting place to view the exhibition, which thematizes and embodies ambiguous locality, presenting the work in multiple venues, on the web and IRL. Geographically Indeterminate Fantasies consists mostly of GIFS, aptly described in the exhibition’s accompanying curatorial statement as “the…
Being a pack rat and a sucker for attachment to objects, I’ve put a lot of thought into the value of things if you are using memory as a currency. Recently my sister Nicole Duennebier and I were invited to participate in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum ongoing project Living Room, created by Lee Mingwei. The series was inspired by Gardener’s collection of art and her desire to share it with others. Different people are invited to host the project, bringing in several objects from their personal collection. The items range from bones to…
The attitude commonly required of museum visitors is that of a flaneur, moving at a relatively sedate stroll or saunter though the many galleries. Megacities Asia at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston has a more rapid heartbeat, so to speak, than most museum exhibitions—visitors may find themselves exploring at an intensified pace that seems suited to a show devoted to the world’s largest and most rapidly-growing cities. In this way, Megacities serves as a vivid postcard of what it is like to navigate a major metropolis. Upon arrival in a new…
Since 1895, cultural institutions from around the world have gathered at the Venice Biennale to present the latest developments in their country’s visual arts, performance, and design. With the Biennale attracting over 500,000 visitors last year, prospective contributors vie to present new projects and exhibitions. In 2015, the Art Biennale, focusing on advances in contemporary art, featured 138 artists from 53 countries. For the 56th and 57th Art Biennale, the U.S. Department of the State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs selected two university museums from the Greater Boston Area to represent…