1708 Gallery is excited to present 5 x 5, a summer program that welcomes 5 artist projects into the gallery for two weeks each. Local artists, including undergraduates and graduates, were invited to submit proposals for how they might utilize the gallery space in an innovative and exploratory way; to test an idea, to experiment with a project, and/or to engage with new audiences. There will be at least one public event during each project’s session. 

CLICK HERE FOR THE DETAILED SCHEDULE

John Freyer, Fifty/Fifty 

June 13 - 25

Fifty/Fifty is a social practice artwork that will use the 1708 Gallery space in two ways: as a community facing storefront where the general public is invited to stop in for conversations over FIVE CENT COFFEE or FREE ICE WATER; and as a working studio space for the design and build out of the RECOVERY ROAST pour-­over coffee cart. FREE HOT SUPPER will be the culmination of the two. Participants in the first two projects are offered a token, good for one seat at a final supper event. Token holders will give their tokens away to someone who belongs to a population affected by addiction; from persons in long term recovery, to a parent or loved one who is grieving the loss of a son, daughter or friend, or to a stakeholder in local government or recovery resources. For more information about John Freyer, please visit his website.

For more information about Fifty/Fifty please click here.

Emily McBride, clean slate

June 27 - July 9

clean slate is a performative public sorting of personal possessions as the artist enters into a transitional phase between finishing graduate school at VCU and moving to a new location. McBride will utilize 1708’s gallery to accomplish the task of sorting through all of her possessions, minimizing to what is essential. This act becomes a platform to engage the public in witnessing the sorting process and the dispersal of items not kept. Visitors are welcome to take from sorted piles such as the “Free Art” pile and “To Donate” pile, assuming the obligation of ownership over these items. For more information about Emily McBride, please visit her website.

 

Mackenzie Williams + Nima Jeizan, A Whole New American Ball Game

July 11 - 23

A Whole New American Ball Game will create a multimedia exhibition space that challenges the formal qualities of traditional painting, sculpture, and performance while exploring the relationship of two friends from vastly different backgrounds coming to terms with the mythologized American Dream. Jeizan was born in Tehran, Iran; Williams in Kansas. The two artists met at VCU School of the Arts and have formed a collaboration that actively examines the polarity between being from somewhere and being born somewhere, while also converging binaries that highlight ethnicity, culture, language, tradition, and sexuality. Open studio hours and public discussion will be a part of the exhibition.

 

Brooke Inman + Molly Fair + Jesse Goldstein, Pattern Language for a Social Fabric 

July 25 - August 6

Pattern Language for a Social Fabric is an experiment in open-printing as a means of developing a creative practice that calls into question any possibility of isolating singular contributions within a collaborative whole, while still allowing artists to engage the work as primary creators. Images have been collected from a wide network and preliminarily burned into screens. During 5 x 5, open-printing sessions will occur, where the public will join the artists in printing on large pieces of paper and fabric, learn the basics of screen printing, and view the partially finished works on the gallery walls. As the various images are repeated and layered upon one another, an intricate and impossible-to-predict social fabric will emerge, offering a poetic and abstract window into a collective psyche. For more information about Brooke Inman, please visit her website.

 

David Moré, THE FOOL!

August 8 - 20

THE FOOL! is a continuation of The Idiot and The Idiot Annex previously exhibited at Black Iris and Anderson Gallery, respectively. For these previous exhibitions, innovated objects were made with discarded materials found near the James River, in the streets of Richmond, and in various dumpsters. In The Fool these same objects are transformed further, radically departing from the look of the original found refuse. Additionally, during The Idiot, a six channel sound installation made from field recordings in and around the James River, and a clarinet player sonically interpreting spoken descriptions of various other rivers, was heard via six tactile transducers attached to objects in the exhibition. During 5 x 5, a new sound installation will be heard, based upon recordings made during the events that happened in and around The Idiot.