Solo Exhibition- Enclosure Press Release
Bridgette Mayer Gallery Presents:
Enclosure, a solo exhibition by Dana Hargrove
January 30 – March 23, 2024
Artist Reception & Happy Hour: Friday, February 2nd, 5:00 – 7:30pm
In the Vault: Ada Trillo
Click for Portfolio and Artist Statement
Philadelphia, PA – January 8, 2024. For our first exhibition of 2024, Bridgette Mayer Gallery is thrilled to announce Enclosure, a solo exhibition by Dana Hargrove featuring all new paintings, works on paper, and two installations. In addition, the Vault will feature photographs by Queer Mexican American artist Ada Trillo from her series, Old El Paso. These exhibitions are included in (re)FOCUS, a Philadelphia citywide festival recognizing the 50th anniversary of Philadelphia Focuses on Women in the Visual Arts (1974) and celebrating how women-identified and BIPOC artists have moved from the periphery to the center of the art world. Enclosure and Old El Paso will be on view from Tuesday, January 30 to Saturday, March 23 at Bridgette Mayer Gallery. On Friday, February 2nd, there will be an artist reception & happy hour from 5:00 – 7:30pm at the gallery.
Fresh off her two recent artist residences in Iceland and North Carolina, Enclosure will be Hargrove’s fifth exhibition with Bridgette Mayer Gallery. The title is derived from the 18th and 19th century Enclosure Movement in England, which forcibly privatized public and communal British land. The work in Enclosure explores our world’s changing landscape in the face of capitalism, industrialization, and environmental threats. Hargrove’s colorful and abstracted landscape paintings blur the distinction between natural and constructed environments, creating a portal to lead viewers from the built world to the untamed wilderness. As a Scottish American artist and frequent world traveler, Hargrove is well-attuned to the underlying narratives found in natural and industrialized landscapes globally and over time. She states:
As a female artist working in an historically male-dominated society, I think about how our developed landscape is a product of short-term ambition and not of generational nurture. I find it astounding how far removed we have come from living naturally on this earth, and how we have arrived at a moment where nature has become increasingly simulated. Even the landscapes on my doorstep are ultra-processed, sometimes in strange ways that add back a sprinkle of nature, often striking me with a wry humor. My recent work comments on the ever-widening gulf between nature and culture and the narrowing green belt that protects nature from our sprawl.
About Dana Hargrove:
Dana Hargrove, born in Edinburgh, Scotland, graduated from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art, Dundee University, Scotland with a Bachelor of Fine Art with Honors in Painting. She continued her education in the USA with a Master of Fine Art from Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Hargrove is a Professor of Studio Art at Rollins College, Winter Park, Florida where she now resides.
Hargrove concerns herself with ideas that frame our perceptions of the land and our sense of place and space. She employs a range of media from photography, collage, sculpture and installed paintings including large-scale site-specific works.
Represented by the Bridgette Mayer Gallery in Philadelphia and Dean Day Gallery in Houston, she continues to exhibit her work both internationally and nationally. She has recently exhibited her work at Start Art Fair, Saatchi Gallery, London; Orlando Museum of Art; Deiglan, Akureyri, Iceland; Alt_space Gallery, Atlantic Center for the Arts; Cornell Fine Arts Museum; Bridgette Mayer Gallery; and Greatmore Studios, Cape Town. She has received several honors and awards such as finalist for the 2017 Florida Prize in Contemporary Art, National Young Painters Competition First Place Award, full artist-in-residence fellowships at The Golden Foundation Residency Program, Hambidge Center for the Arts, Vermont Studio Center, CentralTrak: The UT Dallas Artists Residency, and Greatmore Studios artist in residence in Cape Town, South Africa.
In the Vault:
Bridgette Mayer Gallery’s Vault installation will feature new photographs by Philadelphia artist Ada Trillo. Trillo is a first-generation, Queer Mexican American artist who combines documentary and fine art elements in her photography. A native of the US-Mexican border raised in the Juarez-El Paso binational metroplex, her work is informed by a deep interest in national and metaphorical borders and modernization processes. She has focused on walls of inclusion and exclusion, such as forced prostitution, climate, and violence-related international migration, and US internal exclusions resulting from long-standing barriers of race and class. Trillo’s goal is to bring attention to the impact of these borders on exploited and marginalized people and amplify their voices.
Trillo’s work is in Institutions and private collections, including, The Library of Congress, The Philadelphia Museum of Art, and The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Some of their awards include The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage Fellowship (2022), The Eddie Adams Workshop Canon Award (2022), The Female In Focus 2020, and The Leeway Foundation Transformation Award. Trillo’s work has appeared in publications such as The Guardian, Vogue, Smithsonian Magazine, and Mother Jones, among other publications. She was also awarded The Me & Eve Grant with the Center of Photographic Arts in Santa Fe and received First Place in editorial with the Tokyo International Foto Awards. Trillo has exhibited nationally and internationally in New York City, Philadelphia, Luxembourg, England, Italy, Germany, and Japan. They hold degrees from the Istituto Marangoni in Milan and Drexel University in Philadelphia.
Exhibition information: Enclosure will be on view from Tuesday, January 30 to Saturday, March 23, 2024 at Bridgette Mayer Gallery. On Friday, February 2, Bridgette Mayer Gallery will host an Artist Reception & Happy Hour from 5:00 to 7:30pm.
Gallery information: Bridgette Mayer Gallery is free and open to the public. We are located at 709 Walnut Street, 1st Floor, Philadelphia, PA 19106. Gallery hours are Tuesday – Saturday, 10:00am – 5:00pm.
For more information, please contact Julia Carita at: [email protected].
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