FEBRUARY 18 - MARCH 9, 2008

Application Deadline: October 19, 2007

RACHEL HARRISON, visual artist

Rachel Harrison was born in New York in 1966 and raised nearby. She was enrolled as a comparative religion major at Wesleyan University when she heard a lecture by Adrian Piper, whose intelligence and feminist example inspired Harrison to begin to think about making art seriously. At this time Harrison began to study electronic music with Alvin Lucier and make sound installations. She met John Cage when he came to Wesleyan on the occasion of his seventieth birthday and participated in his work Atlas Ecliptacalis. The political and conceptual framework she was introduced to through these artists has been an undercurrent in all her work.

In the early nineties she created temporary arrangements in many artist-organized exhibitions in Brooklyn and SoHo. She no longer worked in sound, but was able to translate her temporal interests to building architectural space and then into freestanding form. The freedom that this work demonstrated made it hard to pin down, so several critics wrote that they didn’t understand it. Although she consistently applied for grants, she never received one and supported herself by teaching art in the NYC public school system. Of late Harrison’s work is perceived as more digestible as it has taken the more traditional form of sculpture and photography, often mixing hand-made forms with industrial products. She has been included in numerous exhibitions that are seen as serious, such as New Photography 14 MOMA (1999), the Whitney Biennial (2002), a solo show at the Milwaukee Art museum (2002), the Venice Biennale (2004), a solo project at SFMOMA (2004), the Carnegie International (2005), and the Berlin Biennale (2006). This past spring her work was the subject of a solo exhibition at the Migros museum in Zurich. In a catalogue essay for that exhibition, John Kelsey writes, “When sculpture opens itself up to other activities, such as photography or window-shopping, and becomes a sort of switching station where cultural materials and meanings are violently disconnected and recombined, it puts itself into flux too. These are trans-sculptural complexes, perverse and sometimes manic redistributions of the sensible world.“ In a recent article in frieze, Mick Peter said of her work, “The mass of materials and the repetition of families of objects in her show were a device reflecting not a compulsive act, but rather a kind of Brechtian alienation effect, the startling feeling of having the everyday represented while revealing all the mechanisms behind its enactment.”

* For more information about Rachel Harrison, please visit www.greenenaftaligallery.com

RESIDENCY STATEMENT

If art is an argument, what do you have to say? Rather than flog the dead horse of meaning and intent, I hope to encourage discourse about how art is always changing and its constant game of ricochet with cultural production. Part of this residency will consist of feedback and mutual critique, so be prepared to present your earlier work through documentation and to share what you work on in residence for discussion. In addition I hope to have semi-formal discussions on a variety of relevant topics proposed by the participants. This is a studio based program where everyone is expected to work independently.

APPLICATION REQUIREMENTS

Please send adequate documentation that best represents your work: 15-20 images (slides or CD formatted for Macintosh only) or up to 15 minutes of videotape, and/or written materials, website. Please provide a short, succinct, written description of the material you are submitting. A statement about yourself and your work is also required. This residency is open to all artists working in all and every media.

Atlantic Center for the Arts is pleased to announce, through the generous support of the Joan Mitchell Foundation, all painters and sculptors accepted into the 2008 Master Artists-in-Residence programs who demonstrate need will be recommended to receive full financial aid to attend the residency program. Artists from other disciplines may apply to ACA's Financial Aid program.