Past Exhibitions and Events 2017
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The Royal Frog Ballet presents
Hindsight/Foresight December 6-22, 2017 (TEN YEARS OF RELISHING THE WORLD, CREATING ANOTHER) What is the future for? How do we collectively locate an image of tomorrow? Where can we create space for these imagined futures within our present moment? At the mile marker for a decade of performing together, this is what the performance and installation collective known as The Royal Frog Ballet has been pondering. This December with their exhibit Hindsight/Foresight at the A.P.E. Gallery in Northampton the collective engages these questions, as well as the community’s voice, in a celebration of their 10 year anniversary. The exhibit is a visual collection of past work from their annual outdoor Surrealist Cabaret and other performances, with new visual and performative works-in-progress shared in a series of ‘listening evenings’ and themed community discussions. The collective will also be teaching workshops aimed at playful and collaborative art making processes. MORE |
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SEEING OURSELVES: Self-Portraits by 50 Women Artists
Curated by Jane Lund and Rachel Folsom November 3 - December 3, 2017 A.P.E. Gallery is excited to present its first-ever exhibition of self-portraits by 50 area women artists, many of whom have national or international reputations. Curators Jane Lund and Rachel Folsom, figurative painters, have brought together a wide variety of artists, whose work includes many surprising variations on the theme of representational self-portraiture. A number of years in the making, the show provides women artists, who are often underrepresented in galleries and museums, an opportunity to show their artwork as a group while revealing themselves as individuals. The exhibit is also a celebration of the art of the portrait. According to the curators, one of the most compelling images is that of the human face. And self-portraits have particular power as they can reveal much about the artist - personality, character, social class, and the evidence of life’s experiences. In this age of cell phone selfies, the exhibit showcases a different kind of selfie - images made by the artist’s own hand. Participating Artists: Judith Abraham, Martha Armstrong, Genevieve Burnett, Cynthia Consentino, Christin Couture, Sally Curcio, Harriet Diamond, Rachel Folsom, Robin Freedenfeld, Karen Gaudette, Fran Gillespie, Paula Gottlieb, Gillian Haven, Nan Hill, Q Li Holmes, Amy Johnquest, Ticia Kane, Becky Kravitz, Jane Lund, Patricia Mullins, Lindsay Palermo, Linda Post, Terry Rooney, Diane Savino, Katy Schneider, Jan Stenson, Betsy Stone, Lilin Tseng, Ellen Wineberg, Nanny Vonnegut, Petula Bloomfield, Priya Nadkarni Green, Elizabeth Caine, Rochelle Shicoff, Jeannette Lazarus, Scout Cuomo, Susan Halls, Hilary Zaloom, Phoebe Helander, Terry Jenoure, Stephanie Gerolimatos, Margot Apple, Janet Winston, JoAnne Sherburne, Cosima Hewes, Mara Superior. This program is supported in part by a grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and the Northampton Arts Council. |
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This is Japan
Photographs by Chester Michalik October 4-29, 2017 "Anyone who spends a good amount of time in Japan is inevitably asked: why Japan? What do you see in Japan? The more time spent the more difficult it is to provide quick or simple answers. Photographer Chester Michalik has been going to Japan regularly for close to thirty years, as teacher, artist, researcher and observer, and his work reflects his deep interest and insights into ‘what is Japan’. With its many temples and shrines, beautiful scenery, and odd combination of old and new, east and west, Japan has long been considered a photographer’s paradise. It often presents a palimpsest of images, confusing at times, but revealing to the discerning eye that can capture the order (and disorder) of everyday life. As reflected in his photographs, Chester has visited cities, towns, and countryside throughout Japan, with the greater part of his time spent in the Kansai region of Kyoto, Osaka, and Kobe. Some of the sites of his photographs—a building, temple or shop—are identifiable; others could be anywhere in Japan. He finds his subjects by walking the streets and alleyways of cities and towns, its commercial centers and small neighborhoods, observant of the everyday life that Japanese often take for granted. What is Japan to Chester Michalik? The pictures tell the story." - Tom Rohlich MORE |
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Northampton Print and Book Fair
October 1, 2017 The Northampton Print and Book Fair will bring over thirty artists, publishers, and collectives to downtown Northampton for a one-day event celebrating contemporary prints and publications. Artists’ books, zines, chapbooks, mini-comics, screenprints, letterpress and relief prints, etchings and intaglio prints, photographs, photobooks, digital prints, t-shirts, and ephemera. MORE |
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"The Neural Architecture Sees Itself in Patterns”
Paintings by John Aiken September 6-29, 2107 John has been working since 2011 with no formal instruction. He attempts, in this series, to allow the patterns of the neural architecture to see themselves. Creating this work has been a reparative process. He hopes that people viewing the work see that humanity is more than its destructive capacities. He does not use a computer, but works intuitively and by hand with ink and liquid acrylic to create these geometric abstractions. "I wish to thank you for taking precious moments of your time to share with me. The current moment always seems to pass somewhere between fleet and the interminably long. The images that have now found their way to your viewing emerged as a visual narrative that has been reparative for me. We are, each of us, familiar with our seemingly limitless capacity for harm to ourselves, and to our world. For some, this has proven to be much too painfully intimate. Yet, there always lies in wait the possibility of assuaging the seemingly unrelenting pain. My work has come as a result of having wandered rather aimlessly through the dark labyrinth of my past. The seductive feeling of inescapability had become prevalent, and the notion of eventual emergence had assumed a dormancy from which an awakening seemed not to be. It was here that the wondrous and inexplicable realm of the unconscious began to stir, clearly wishing to makes its presence known. Not with words, but rather with a visual language. This was to be a shared language in an attempt to convey to others, to you perhaps, that we are so much more than our violent destruction. We possess a potentially limitless capacity to heal through creativity. I believe that in no small way, artisans have become the proverbial finger in the dyke. So, again I thank you for sharing your time with me. I sincerely hope that it has proven brief respite from your daily clutter." - John, New Hampshire native and a retired cabinetmaker. |
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Big Dance Theater’s CAGE SHUFFLE starring Paul Lazar
Monday, August 14, 2017 In Cage Shuffle Paul Lazar speaks a series of one-minute stories by John Cage from his 1963 score Indeterminacy while simultaneously performing choreography by Annie-B Parson. The stories are spoken in a random order with no predetermined relationship to the dancing. Chance serves up its startling blend of inevitable and uncanny connections between text and movement. Parson and Lazar founded Big Dance Theater in in 1991. Based in New York, the Company tours internationally and is known for its inspired use of dance, music, text and visual design. The company often works with wildly incongruent source material, weaving and braiding disparate strands into a multi-dimensional performance of stories and movement. MORE |
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Ordinary Devotion
Martha Fleming-Ives August 8 – August 26, 2017 A.P.E is pleased to present Ordinary Devotion, an exhibition of new photographs by Martha Fleming-Ives. Taken during the artist’s first year of motherhood and her daughter’s infancy, Ordinary Devotion depicts her early experiences as a mother through images of her growing child, her changing body, and the domestic space immediately surrounding them. Over the past several years, Fleming-Ives’ photographic practice has focused upon unflinching portraits of members of her family, at times capturing vulnerable periods of transition and growth. Here, Fleming-Ives turns her lens to herself, identifying the mother-child relationship as a familial point of origin. Taking its title from English pediatrician and psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott’s statement that an “ordinary devoted mother”—present rather than perfect—is enough for the healthy development of a child, Fleming-Ives’ series acts as a negotiation between the seemingly opposite mundane tasks of daily life tending to an infant and the blissful, often spiritual, sensuality present in caring for a new child. MORE |
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“Cuba in Transition: Narrative and Perspective”
by Mark Guglielmo June 1-25, 2017 “Cuba in Transition: Narrative and Perspective” is a new exhibition of large-scale photo-collages, interviews, and field recordings by Northampton-based artist Mark Guglielmo. Curated by Waleska Santiago-Centeno, the exhibit opens at A.P.E. Gallery in June 2017 and will travel to Cienfuegos and Trinidad, Cuba in January 2018. Each collage measures 5 to 15 feet long and is handmade by taping together hundreds, sometimes thousands, of individual 4x6” photographs. Neither a computer nor Photoshop are used. Culled from dozens of audio interviews Guglielmo recorded and conducted in Spanish, diverse Cuban voices and perspectives are presented on portable mp3 players. MORE This program is sponsored by NEPR, El Sol Latino, WHMP, Daily Hampshire Gazette, WGBY, and supported in part by a grant from the Northampton Arts Council, a local agency which is supported by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency. |
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2 Behold: Feeling figured into landscape
Laura Radwell & Kate Childs May 4-28, 2017 The exhibition features abstract landscape paintings by Kate Childs and Laura Radwell, two artists with two different visions, conjured from within in contemplation of the world without. Childs’ work communicates peace and calm, a sense of quietude. Radwell’s work contains movement, hints of changing conditions, and surprising elements. Her surroundings are more ambiguous and weathered than Childs’ more romantic, dreamlike locales. |
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Marcus DeSieno
Surveillance Landscapes April 5 - 30, 2017 at A.P.E. In our increasingly intrusive electronic culture, how do we delineate the boundary between public and private? “Surveillance Landscapes” is a body of work that interrogates how surveillance technology has changed our relationship to—and understanding of—landscape and place. To produce this work, DeSieno hacks into surveillance cameras, public webcams, and CCTV feeds in pursuit of the “classical” picturesque landscape. The resulting visual product becomes dislocated from its automated origins and leads to an investigation of land, borders, and power. The very act of surveying a site through these photographic systems implies a dominating relationship between man and place. MORE |
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CHANCE ENCOUNTERS
Sculptures by Mutsu Crispin March 8 - April 2, 2017 One’s first discovery of the bouncy ball (or ‘superball’) usually involves a surprise, and extreme delight, as an unassuming little orb of compressed rubber explodes off the ground or wall. In a series of sculptures by Vermont-based artist Mutsu Crispin, balls of different sizes, colors and visceral qualities are coaxed, danced, bullied or ouijaed into place to create a range of immersive visions. Each gaggle of balls is gently squeezed and suspended and — as if a spell were cast over them — time is suddenly frozen, gravity resisted or dispelled. Then begins a deepening play of associations as the balls float within their designs or wanderings, rhyming with their cast shadows, ghostly glows, nearby hardware and reflections. These dear objects from our childhood are animated and transmogrified, speaking in a chorus at once lighthearted, humorous, mysterious and ecstatic. “Chance Encounters” explores the delicate play of accident, mistake, and meaningful coincidence as part of the process of making work and in the experience of interacting with it. Many of the sculptures feature organic dispersions of balls that suggest essential forms viewed through a microscope or telescope — universes of particles, organisms, energy fields, thoughts or spiritual impulses. These contrast with pieces in which 100’s of bouncy balls are arranged into perfect grids, conjuring a pixellated reality reminiscent of 8-bit computer graphics from the 80’s and 90’s (particularly early video games like Asteroids, Space Invaders, Super Mario Bros., etc.), used here to evoke a range of abstract topographies. |
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Suspended Echoes
Fafnir Adamites with sound by Neil Young Cloaca Turners Falls artists Fafnir Adamites and Neil Young Cloaca collaborate on this show of large-scale, interactive paper and sound sculptures. Inspired by the state of being in-between or at a transitional threshold, this series of inhabitable paper structures create spaces of isolation for the participant. Inside each discrete node, a speaker emits its own sound of reflection. The paper membrane is a temporary point of contact and separation that like a speaker, both receives and transmits. MORE |
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Gordon Thorne Installation
January 21 -31, 2017 |