November 4- November 29, 2008

Bridgette Mayer Gallery, Philadelphia

Opening Reception, First Friday, November 7th 6:00pm-8:30pm

Please join the Bridgette Mayer Gallery, as we are pleased to announce the solo show of Scottish painter, Dana Hargrove title Divide and Consider.

Hargrove’s new collection of work stems from a recent summer residency in South Africa. During her time there, Hargrove discovered the still present consequences of colonization, imperialism, and segregation. In her installations one can recognize the use of European and African motifs to address the idea of globalization through both popular culture and militaristic means. Ever present in Hargrove’s work, is her investigation between culture and nature, in Divide and Consider, she calls on the viewer to look into the two with her through various types of imagery.

Aside from her residencies and travels, Dana Hargrove is an Assistant Professor of Studio Art at Rollins College in Winter Park, FL, and has various site specific installations in the United States and abroad.

Divide and Consider will run from November 4- November 29, 2008, with an opening reception, First Friday, November 7th from 6:00- 8:30p.m.

“Many of the works in this exhibition reference African/European motifs and strike a personal resonance for me. By isolating visual cues from within my experienced landscapes, such as local security fences and gates throughout Cape Town, I am able to signify the emotional and intellectual barriers or walls that are often consciously or subconsciously enhanced by our physical surroundings.” - Dana Hargrove 

November 4- November 29, 2008

Opening Reception with the artist: Friday, November 7th from 6:00- 8:30pm 

Philadelphia, PA – The Bridgette Mayer Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition of new works by Scottish artist Dana Hargrove titled “Divide and Consider.” The show will run from November 4- November 29, 2008 with an opening reception on First Friday, November 7th, 6:00-8:30pm.  Last summer Dana Hargrove travelled to South Africa and Tanzania to complete a residency at Greatmore Studios. Her new body of work explores her ongoing interest in globalization and militaristic issues, while discussing the colonization of South Africa.   Anna Brzyski, professor from the University of Kentucky writes, “Dana Hargrove’s works fit comfortably within this broadly international tendency, though her intelligent use of richly decorative forms does not stem from an impulse to follow the prevalent fashion. She does not use ornament for ornament’s sake. The evocative sensuality of color, details, and patterns that appear in the pieces such as “The Empire’s New Clothes,” “Broekie,” or “Spikes” is deceptive. The visual playfulness of these works has a definite edge. It evokes the specter of the colonial and apartheid past that haunts South Africa’s present.” 

To see more images from Divide and Consider please click on the link below. 

Dana Hargrove- Divide and Consider

Bridgette Mayer Gallery 709 Walnut Street, 1st Floor Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19106 

T: 215-413-8893

F: 215-413-2283 E: bridgetteart@earthlink.net 

www.bridgettemayergallery.com

Here are a few images from the opening of Roots Routes. Also below is an interview that Greatmore released in their newsletter and a link to a podcast of an interview with SAFM, South Africa’s national radio station:
  podcast interview with SAFM click here

TAG catches up with two visiting artists to talk about life, art making and their upcoming exhibition…Dana Hargrove  

TAG: Talk us through your creative processDana Hargrove: I came to the residency with a sense that I wanted to work with patterns, perhaps African textiles or icons specific to the urban landscape in Cape Town. My work uses happy, cheerful colours but in a way is like a double-edged sword, it is loaded with multiple meanings.I think I had set my sights two high and that made me initially disappointed .I came to South Africa already thinking about all the crates of work that I would have to return home with. After two months though I had hardly anything to show! I had not really considered the ‘real’ time it would take to actually produce work in this very foreign place. It takes time to develop one’s ideas. Getting to know my father and sister during my visit to South Africa have been a huge part of my growth and creative process…when I initially came everything was a little uncomfortable as you can imagine must have had some culture shock but it has all worked out.TAG: What are your feelings about your upcoming exhibition, what can we expect?D.H.:I can visualize the exhibition! I feel happy about that. I was stressed earlier, but realising that it is an open studio event takes the pressure off and I began to just produce.I hope to strip the whole studio to whiteness and mount little canvases on the walls of different spike motifs that are common on many of the neighborhood fences- this will form some sort of installation. I am also hoping to accompany this body of work with photographs of fences, gates and communication lines that have informed my work over the last three months. For me photographs add a clear dimension to the show. In some of my work, I explore an Afrikaans structural fence called ‘broekie-lace which are very much embedded in Edwardian history and has links with imperialism. They are very colonial. Since I arrived I have been able to pick up the links everywhere with Europe- a culture that has a strong signature in the architecture. I was interested in isolated visual cues in the landscape that could speak for something else. The ‘broekie-lace’ as much as it speaks of security also can allude to the pretty barriers we erect in our communication with others on a relational level. I think people will understand the work. Some of my pieces are a little moody but all of it is pretty readable.

Press release: “Showcasing the work of Dana Hargrove from Scotland and Lesego Moncho from the North West, Roots Routes, is a visual art exhibition that looks at drawing the unique narratives of these two artists. By exploring the cultures surrounding them and expressing their own individual journeys through their personal landscapes, the community is encouraged to view recent works completed by these two artists during their stay over a three-month Visiting Artist Programme at Greatmore Studios.”

The catalogue can be looked at by clicking here.

In October 2006 Dana Hargrove had her first solo exhibition at the Bridgette Mayer Gallery.

Artist Statement:
Transcapes

Transcapes is an exhibition that questions the many ways in which the landscape is represented by our culture. The representation of the landscape through various existing systems interests me; it can alter reality keeping us at an abstracted distance by turning the human into passive spectators and consumers. It can change landscape into a capitalized form. Most of the works in the exhibition explore this idea by using found imagery taken out of context to question the original intent, references to mapping, the media, digital landscapes, military intelligence and travel systems all provide inspiration. This exhibition encourages further thought on the connections between nature and culture, where struggles occur as we alter the land in which we live.

Below is an essay that Dr Kelly Wacker wrote for the catalogue:

Transcapes Kelly Wacker, 2006
TRANSCAPE

As a native of Scotland, Dana Hargrove was reared in a culture that places great significance in its landscape. As such, it is not surprising that she pays keen attention to the landscapes she occupies and passes through, as well as to the ways in which society conceptualizes them. Transcape aptly describes the work in this exhibition – it embraces both the representation of the landscape itself and our engagement with it. Work in this exhibition is open to simultaneous multiple, even conflicting, interpretation. Does it refer to war and/or recreation? Is its meaning benign and/or malevolent? Are the forms natural and/or constructed? Does it represent a macrocosm and/or microcosm? Hargrove’s paintings and mixed media work create a slippery environment of shifting boundaries and content that rewards the careful viewer willing to explore its inherent multiplicity. As a widely traveled individual not currently living in her native country Hargrove’s work reveals her role as observer, of being in the privileged position of seeing the world in a fresh way. In this manner she exists in a metascape, the in-between world where unexpected connections can be made. Such emphasis on travel (and by implication, movement) implies the presence of the body, which although largely absent in her work, its impact is felt everywhere. Much of Hargove’s work investigates systems that she breaks down into modular units; as fragmented pieces they reflect the ways in which we often experience our world as we absorb information while we catapult through the air, hurl along highways, navigate cavernous cyberspace, and mediate media. We often only have time to catch snippets of the landscape or datascape around us and it is precisely these fragments that Hargrove gives painstaking attention.

Kelly Wacker, 2006

Kelly Wacker is an Assistant Professor of Art and the Gallery Director at the University of Montevallo in Alabama.