April 29, 2017 Serendipity: Williams House 2014-2016 Book Series Release
#FFFHEX contemporary art gallery and Airprint Press are pleased to announce the Serendipity: Williams House (S:WH) 2014-2016 Book Series Release on April 29, 2017 from 5-7 PM. There will be copies of the books for review and limited copies available for purchase.
S:WH is the studio and experimental exhibition space of artists Lucy Kirkman Allen and Justin Hunter Allen. The Allens invited artists from across the USA and abroad to hang artwork in a single room of a farmhouse in Onemo, VA. Because of its isolated location, these exhibitions were conceived and documented to exist solely in book form. Fourteen collaborators in eight books bring together critical and creative writing with paintings, sculptures, and prints. The project is about artistic relationships, the studio ecosystem, and extended conversations with friends. Contributor Michael Corris writes of the project, "Maybe it’s the idea that there is still some life in the concept of the catalogue at all. The catalogue-as-work, rather than simply document, is the oldest Conceptual Art trick in the book. It is the book."
Airprint Press, part of the Airplant Project, is an artist-run press dedicated to free access to its published books. The S:WH series is available for online viewing at www.airplantproject.org. Downloadable print files to make your own copies are also free on the website.
Pictured: Excerpt from Fullmoon Mysticism
Serendipity: Williams House 2014-2016 is:
Correspondence
Texts by
Michael Corris
Richard Bailey
Michael Dorsch
Fox
Works by
Justin Hunter Allen
Lucy Kirkman Allen
Eagle or Hawk
Text and works by
Travis Iurato
Twilight Time
Text and works by
Joe Allen
Fullmoon Mysticism
Text and works by
Philip Hinge
4 Winds
Text by
V. B. Bandjunis
Works by
Cynthia Bandjunis
Royal Waves
Works by
Kelly Kroener
Eli Walker
Stranger States, No Longer Real
Works by
Makiko Nagaya
Peter Lewis
Contributor Biographies
Michael Corris is an artist and writer living and working in Dallas, Texas. Corris has exhibited internationally — both as an individual artist and as a member of the Conceptual art collective, Art & Language — at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; TateBritain, London; and MACBA, Barcelona. Recent publications include Conceptual Art: Theory, Myth and Practice (Cambridge University Press, 2004), Ad Reinhardt (Reaktion Books, London, 2008), Art, Word & Image: 2,000 Years of Textual/Visual Interaction (Reaktion Books, London, 2010) (with John Dixon Hunt and David Lomas), and Leaving Skull City: Selected Writings on Art (Les Presses du Réel, Dijon, 2016).
Richard Bailey has four films featured in the 2017 AVIFF Cannes Catalogue. His films have shown at Alchemy Film & Moving Image, Anthology Film Archives, Berlin Experimental, Black Maria, Blow-Up, Dallas VideoFest, Proyector International, SENE, SXSW, and many other festivals. He has a film featured in Vol. 36 of the Journal of Short Film, a peer-reviewed journal in DVD form. His poems have appeared in several journals, including The Madison Review, Mudfish, Quiddity, and Whiskey Island Magazine. Find out more at www.TropicPictures.com
Michael Dorsch is an art historian educated at Swarthmore College and The Institute of Fine Art, New York University. He is the author of French Sculpture Following the Franco-Prussian War, 1870-1880: Realist Allegories and the Commemoration of Defeat. He lives in New York City and has taught at Hunter College and The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art.
Lucy Kirkman Allen's latest solo painting exhibition When a Man's House was Finished was at Galleri Urbane in Dallas, Texas. She works in Onemo, VA and cooperatively runs the Serendipity: Williams House gallery and #FFFHEX gallery. She studied at the Cooper Union in New York, NY and was a Harriet Hale Woolley Scholar at the Fondation des Etats-Unis in Paris, France. She co-directed the experimental gallery Studio DTFU in Dallas from 2011-2014 and was a founding member of SCAB, a network of artist-run exhibition spaces. She has exhibited her work at Locker 95 Gallery, Homeland Security, New Age Drinks, Angstrom Gallery, and the Dallas Biennial. Her work in painting and curating has been covered in publications such as Art in America, FDLuxe, Glasstire, /seconds, the Dallas Morning News, DMagazine and Lonny.
Justin Hunter Allen works in painting and sculpture. He received his BFA from The Cooper Union in 2010 and now lives coastal Virginia. Allen has had solo exhibitions at RE Gallery, Beefhaus, and Studio DTFU and has also shown his work at New Age Drinks, the Dallas Museum of Art, Oliver Francis Gallery, Plush, and Angstrom Gallery.
Travis Iurato (born 1985, Tucson) lives and works in Flagstaff, AZ where he is the Artistic Director of the Flagstaff Arts Council and co-directs curatorial project New Age Drinks. He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from The Cooper Union in New York in 2009. Iurato has exhibited at venues including the Museum of Northern Arizona (Flagstaff) Satellite Contemporary (Las Vegas), Studio DTFU (Dallas), Ferro-Strouse Gallery (New York/Miami) and Recession Art (Brooklyn).
Joe Allen (born 1949, Texas) has exhibited widely at venues including the Sharjah International Biennial, Studio DTFU in Dallas, the Santa Barbara Contemporary, and the San Antonio Museum of Art. He was awarded a NEA-Mid-America Arts Alliance grant in 1994 which he used to purchase video editing equipment, creating his first body of multi-media work. Allen’s art is included in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, McNeese State University, and private collections in the United States and abroad.
Philip Hinge (b. 1988) received his MFA in painting from the Virginia Commonwealth University and his BFA in painting from MICA. Hinge's work has been shown at a variety of venues including CONNERSMITH (Washington DC), Context; Art Miami, Freddy (Baltimore, MD), Brennan & Griffin (New York, NY) and GCA (Brooklyn, NY). He is the founder of Catbox Contemporary, a gallery in Ridgewood, NY.
V. B. Bandjunis (1930-2016) graduated from the University of Maryland, and was commissioned in the Navy’s Civil Engineer Corps. After serving 8 years, he returned to Maryland and civilian life where he earned his Master of Science degree from George Washington University. He worked for the Navy as a civilian engineer, and in the Pentagon for the Secretary of Defense in the Logistics directorate. After retiring in 1985, Bandjunis relocated to Mathews County where he served on the Planning Commission and as an election official. Bandjunis, recalled by the Secretary of Defense, was a staff member of the first Base Realignments and Closure Commission that was formed in 1988. He was a genealogist and a historian, and published a history of the Navy’s base at Diego Garcia. An amateur archeologist, Bandjunis documented the existence of a 10,000 year old Native American site in Mathews County. He combined his interest in archaeology and the arts by creating bowls from the many pottery sherds he found—creating new art and a way to envision the original works made by ancient hands.
Cynthia Bandjunis (1934-2005) began painting in 1971. A graduate of Whidden Memorial Hospital School of Nursing, she worked as an emergency room nurse. Her many interests including sewing, being a women's rights activist, and politics, managing the campaigns of several local candidates and attending the Democratic National Convention as a delegate. After retiring, Bandjunis relocated to Mathews County where she was a music director at the Francis de Sales Church in Mathews, at the Blessed Sacrament Church in West Point, and the musician at the Mathews Baptist Church. Her greatest talent was in music. "I always hear music," she often said. Bandjunis formed and directed the Celebration Singers, and was President of the Mathews Music Study Club.
Kelly Kroener is a fiber artist working in Cincinnati. She grew up horseback riding and drawing in rural Ohio. She studied fashion and sculpture at SAIC in Chicago and taught at-risk youth in Baltimore. In 2011 she co-founded domestic gallery Homeland Security Gallery in the Cedars neighborhood of Dallas with her partner Eli Walker. Kroener has exhibited her work at RE Gallery, Lilian Bradshaw Gallery, Usable Space Gallery, Green Gallery West, Helmuth Projects, and PEREGRINEPROGRAM.
Eli Walker is an artist and the director of Basketshop Contemporary Gallery in Westwood, OH. He studied at SAIC and MICA. Walker has exhibited his work at Cydonia Gallery, Usable Space, Green Gallery West, Galleri Urbane, University of Dallas, and Angstrom Gallery. His work has been written about in Art in America, Arts + Culture Magazine, and FDLuxe. He co-directed Homeland Security Gallery in Dallas from 2012-2016.
Makiko Nagaya is an artist and curator. Her practice has resisted the obligatory compromises demanded by institutions, coinciding both the making and displaying of specific works in collaboration. Nagaya was Associate Curator of works by Japanese artists at the 6th Sharjah Biennial. With Peter Lewis, she exhibits and performs under the name of Redux Projects.
Peter Lewis is an artist, curator, and writer. He is Research Fellow, and Leader of M.A Art and Design, at Leeds Beckett University. His work has extended over three decades, holding posts as varied as Curator of 6th Sharjah Biennial, and the Independent Curator at Kunstverein, Bregenz. He has curated projects at Tramway and Tate Modern, publishing research in the online journal, slashseconds. Lewis has been involved in artist-curating since 1976, when he began working with the artist and curator Paul Neagu's artist-run space in London. He was central to its alternative scene in 1990s, and advanced the relationship between the global museum and specific artist-run practices. He is currently writing on the work of the artist and activist, Rasheed Araeen.