June 3, 2011: Opening and June First Friday Reception
July 1, 2011: Gallery Talk and July First Friday Reception 

1708 Gallery is pleased to announce its upcoming exhibition—Greg Stewart’s Engine of Bones Man the Handyman, featuring sculpture and digital prints. The exhibition opens during the First Friday Art Walk on June 3 with a reception from 6 to 10 p.m. Meet the artist and enjoy complimentary hors d’ oeuvres and a cash bar. The artist will give a gallery talk during the July First Friday reception at 7 p.m. on Friday, July 1. The exhibition will conclude with Stewart's performance in SWEAT IT OUT on Friday, July 8th. SWEAT IT OUT is a night of performance art and video held in the courtyard of Richmond's historic Linden Row Inn. Click here for more details about SWEAT IT OUT.

For Greg Stewart, the world is a continuum—it “does not begin here or end there, but is always going on.” Stewart’s work explores how humans locate themselves in such a world, focusing particularly on their perceived need to move. He “imagines a reality constructed out of a necessity to move from place to place”.

In Engine of Bones Man the Handyman, Stewart continues his imaginary exploration of migration and survival in an ever-changing environment. His portable structures—small fruit trees emerging from the bodies of deer-like forms, which are set in wheel barrow-like carts—are part migrating herd, part sustenance-providing orchard and suggest mutation and movement as a form of adaptability.

Also on display will be tools and accessories created from the “hides” of these animals, as well as digital prints documenting them in an urban environment, adding pragmatic and temporal elements to the exhibition.

Greg Stewart lives and works in Harrisonburg, Virginia where he is the Associate Professor of Sculpture at James Madison University. He received a BFA from State University of New York at Brockport and an MFA from Ohio University in Athens, Ohio. His solo and collaborative work has been shown nationally and internationally at such venues as Dean Project in New York, the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art and Al Sabah Gallery in Kuwait. For more information, visit his website: www.gregstewartsite.org