Duke Riley’s Those About to Die Salute You is the second installment of a multi-part residency that began with a recreation of a Romanesque bread and circus naval battle or naumachia that drew more than one thousand toga-clad spectators to a World’s Fair reflecting pool adjacent to the Queens Mus... Read more
Duke Riley’s Those About to Die Salute You is the second installment of a multi-part residency that began with a recreation of a Romanesque bread and circus naval battle or naumachia that drew more than one thousand toga-clad spectators to a World’s Fair reflecting pool adjacent to the Queens Museum on August 13, 2009. For this exhibition, Riley converts the QMA’s Small Triangle Gallery into a diorama revisiting that event through the detritus of the battle – armor, elements of the coliseum backdrop, battle-scarred vessels – while multi-channel video brings the “props” to life. In addition, Riley will be unveiling Morituri Te Salutant (2009), a special edition print depicting the event in laser engraving and dry-point on Plexiglas printed on paper handmade from the same phragmites reeds that Riley harvested in Flushing Meadows Corona Park for the construction of his naval vessels.
About the Artist
Duke Riley’s work addresses the prospect of residual but forgotten unclaimed frontiers on the edge and inside overdeveloped urban areas, and their unsuspected autonomy. His work explores the struggle of marginal peoples within all-encompassing societies, the tension between individual and collective behavior, and the conflict with institutional power. He is known for a body of work incorporating the seafarer’s craft with nautical history through drawing, printmaking, mosaic, sculpture, performative interventions, and video structured as complex multimedia installations. Duke Riley was born in Boston and received his B.F.A. from RISD in Rhode Island. Then he moved to New York, settling down in Brooklyn, and earned his M.F.A. from Pratt Institute.
