Special Guest curator Linda Weintraub invited ten artists from the NURTUREart registry to break the conventions of art display and production that arose during the first flush of industrial productivity. Instead of taking abundance for granted, tolerateing waste, and disregarding contamination, the artists exhibiting in Demo Eco M.O. ‘Demonstrate Ecological Modes of Operation’ in art.
Carol Taylor-Kearney applies her creative and aesthetic ingenuity to fabricate art-making tools. By lending them to other artists in the exhibition she helped reduce unnecessary expenditures of material and energy associated with manufacturing, packaging, and transporting art tools.
Christina Massey gathered unsold and rejected works of art donated by the other artists and utilized them as her medium. She not only avoided purchasing new art materials, she helped other artists reduce the material and energy costs associated with storing and preserving art.
John Day offers artists and gallery visitors alternatives to purchasing newly manufactured art mediums by focusing on the formal qualities of society’s discards. The waste stream becomes a site of enticing aesthetic opportunities.
Tamar Hirschl methodically inventories neglected resources and documents the new contexts and uses for these items that she initiates in her artwork. In this manner she exemplifies responsible engagement with material.
Gunter Puller demonstrates the full cycle of disintegration and creation by dismantling an outdated Yellow Book and then exposing it to the sun and rain. As the pages decompose, they transform into a growing medium for seeds that travel in the urban air and settle there by chance.
Lynn Richardson reduces the electricity used in galleries by creating a sculpture that consists of light fixtures and surveillance technology. The light from her sculpture is designed to illuminate the other works in the exhibition, but only when they are being viewed.
Scrapworm performs on-site narratives that reveal the recent and historic manipulation of Williamsburg ecosystems. The performance aspect of her contribution avoids the ecological costs of material fabrication, display, transport, and storage of art.
Anne Katrin Spiess provides a low carbon dioxide emissions alternative to motorized transportation of mediums, tools, and art works. She performs these art pick-ups and deliveries on her bicycle.
Patricia Tinajero establishes a functional reintegration between the gallery and its ecosystem by collecting and utilizing the rainwater that falls upon the gallery’s roof. The resource supplies gallery visitors with water to drink and to grow edible plants. She thereby severs the gallery’s dependence on municipalities to provide water for business and life-supporting activities.
Joyce Yamada and Joanne Ungar evoke the necessity of undertaking the thorough eco-overhaul of art practices by demonstrating the consequences of denying, ignoring, or defying environmental reforms.
Weintraub concludes, “Demo Eco M.O. expands the application of environmental considerations far beyond artists’ choices of medium. The exhibition demonstrates ways to reduce the footprint of exhibiting, transporting, storing, and maintaining art. Furthermore, it activates such ecological aspects of artistic collaboration as sharing resources and providing support services. In all these ways the artists demonstrate principles of sustainability that apply to all human behaviors. Such art asserts that artists’ responsibility to the environment begins with a thorough review of their own professional practices.”
