Fall 2010 Exhibition
September 24th, 2010 to January 3rd, 2011
First and Second Floor Galleries:
The Sitting Room: 4 Studies
Jennifer Angus, Ligia Bouton, Carole Loeffler and Saya Woolfalk
Public Opening: Friday, September 24, 2010, 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.
Throughout the first and second floor galleries the Philadelphia Art Alliance (PAA) will present
The
Sitting Room: Four Studies, an exhibition that will incorporate newly commissioned works
with a post-disciplinary approach to the expanding definition of the term “craft” to create four
separate but interrelated installations based on the historical concept of the sitting room. All exhibitions are organized by Melissa Caldwell, Director of Exhibitions at the PAA.
An
opening reception will be held on September 24 from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.
The Sitting Room considers the ideological meanings associated with the history of the sitting
room, the original function of the building as a residence, and the physical features of the first
and second floor galleries of the PAA. Four artists will create installations that are not an
historical recreation of the building as a private home, but an interpretation of the concept of
“display”—as a reflection of social anxieties and desires—for a contemporary audience. In
addition, the projects for The Sitting Room invite connections between craft and conceptual art
practices, bringing the usual assumptions of craft as domestic ornament into the realm of
installation art.
The exhibition takes three factors into consideration. First, this exhibition considers Victorian
concepts of the parlor room. The sitting room (also termed the parlor room or the drawing
room) was a prominent feature of domestic architecture until the early 20th century and
served as a public reception space within a private setting. As the site of public social
interaction, it was meant to exhibit or display the home in its most refined state. As such, the
sitting room acted as a performance space for the social presentation and the self-imposed
definition of its inhabitants. In this framework, the sitting room as a site for private display parallels the purpose of the PAA as a site for public display. Secondly, the projects consider
the position of craft within contemporary art. The recent resurgence in scholarship posits craft
as an expanding concept that transcends boundaries based on medium, function, or empty
aesthetic pleasure. The term now incorporates many other fields of creativity as well as new
technologies, reinforcing a post-disciplinary approach beyond the restriction of a single
medium, and a connection of the crafted object to the fine arts, interior design, architecture,
new media, performing art, and pop culture. Third, the theme of the exhibition is predicated
upon the history of the building as a residence. The Philadelphia Art Alliance (cited on the
National Register of Historic Places in Philadelphia) was built as a residence in 1906 for
Samuel P. Wetherill. The rigid delineation of internal space reflected the standard models of
the Victorian home, and as with most mansions of the period, the first floor of the Wetherill
residence contained two formal sitting rooms, a public reception room to greet guests and a
parlor room for entertaining.
Despite the aesthetic differences in the work that will be commissioned for this exhibition,
several overlapping themes emerge through the project proposals. As the sitting room in the
Victorian area signified a place in the home with specific functions, all of the artists have
chosen to interpret this for a contemporary audience by addressing several subjects from a
sociological perspective: for Jennifer Angus, an alternative view of the 19th century and the
mania surrounding ideas of collection and display during that period; for Carole Loeffler, the psychological implications of the domestic interior; for Ligia Bouton, the history of Victorian
parlor seances; and for Saya Woolfalk, the creation of an alternative utopian space for an
imagined future--using vernacular materials combined with technology--to forge
alternative/mobile spaces that create ideal social communities. |
Project Description:
Jennifer Angus
 Jennifer Angus' project is an investigation
into biology (specifically entomology) that
merges seamlessly with her artistic practice
through an evocation of domestic interiors.
Angus will create an interior that is literally “wallpapered” with insect carapaces,
combining these objects with actual
wallpaper designed by the artist that contain
insect themes from children’s literature. Her
project will invoke the Victorian aesthetic of
taste, clutter, and exotica (all artfully displayed in unusual “cabinets of curiosity”) from an age
in which travel, exploration, and scientific study were immensely popular. Her project will also
incorporate another common use for Victorian sitting room as place for the viewing of the
recently deceased. For The Sitting Room, Angus will divide her selected gallery into three
rooms all appearing to be of the Victorian era: a ladies’ parlor, a men’s parlor, and a common
space which will give the impression of a dining room for a funerary feast. Located within the
parlor spaces, resting upon tables will be Victorian style dollhouses with insect carapaces
placed in anthropomorphized positions to enact parlor activities—reminiscent of animal
characters in children’s literature from the period.
Through the creation of a tripartite space, Angus examines the sitting room from several
vantage points: as a private refuge and as a quasi-public space within a home, as a display
context for possessions, memories, and souvenirs, as a space for memorial, and as a setting
for discussions of how spaces are defined by gender. Although referencing the Victorian era
and the “home” aesthetically, Angus will explore the fantastic and whimsical meanings of the
domestic interior, seizing upon the contemporary collective visual imagination of 19th century
society.
Carole Loeffler
 Carole Loeffler’s work is a form of visual
archaeology rather than a specific aesthetic
style. She creates elaborate cultural object based
narratives through furnishings and décor.
Her installations use objects to signify
displacement, as she considers the objects as
metonyms or stand-ins for the person who's not
visible. Rather than symbolic, the objects are
specific in terms of an individual's use in an
exact position, adjacency, and context of the room.
For the exhibition Loeffler will present an installation entitled, 5 Situations: to conflict and
coalesce. This will include five small circular rooms within the gallery space. The walls will be
made out of fabric that is Victorian inspired hung on a circular frame with individual flooring. In
each room there will be a set of upholstered chairs. Each set of chairs will create a feeling that
occurs in a formal reception space. The placement of the chairs is meant to dictate the
different feelings and emotions a living room creates and to reinforce various feelings, such as
separation, isolation, tension and awkwardness.
For example, in one room, two chairs will be upholstered together back to back. The vertical
backs of the chairs will be one unit. Another room will have two chairs upholstered together to
sit side by side, and yet two others will be created as circles facing inward and outward. In
addition, each room will also include a multi-layered sound piece that involves verbs that
begin with the letter c. The subtle sound element is meant to reinforce the range of feelings in
each room or "situation”.
Saya Woolfalk
For “The Sitting Room,” Saya Woolfalk will focus on the function of the sitting room in futuristic and utopian terms. Her project, entitled The Ethnography of No Place, includes a series of
videos and a resulting installation that inhabits the intersections of surrealism and relativist
ethnography. As Woolfalk notes, “the name is derived from the English word, “utopia,” coined by
Thomas More from the Greek “no” (ou) and “place” (topos)--literally, No Place.” Constructed from
household materials using a craft based approach and aesthetic, the place and characters evoke
travel narratives, body transformation, costumes, children’s playrooms, and science fiction.
The installation is based on a series of films that find relevancy to all times and periods.
The participants of No Place inhabit an imagined utopia through play and masquerade to
reconsider ways we normally think about and represent gender, race, class, and the
environment. Performers will interact with objects and wear costumes that denaturalize their
bodies, and will expose how such symbols influence subjectivity from a sociological vantage
point. These videos of No Place--produced with anthropologist and filmmaker Rachel Lears--will
present different facets of this imagined society: its birth, death, afterlife and mourning; kinship;
object exchange; war and play; collecting and memory. Viewers will watch The Ethnography of No Place in a room with brightly painted walls and props and costumes from the videos. Overall,
the installation gives a view into communally imagined permutation of a space for the future.
Ligia Bouton
 Ligia Bouton’s work combines sculpture with performance, digital video, and photography. Each project wrestles with issues of functionality and narrative, drawing on sources from art history, classical and contemporary literature, and science. Sculptural objects are used in documented performances to recreate these appropriated narratives. The desire to “try on” different identities does not equate itself in this work with a need to become someone or something else. Rather, by recreating or enacting these roles, what surfaces is an awareness of the body’s own distinct boundaries.
For The Sitting Room, Bouton turns to early documentation of Victoria parlor séances to create an installation that explores the intersections between fantasy and reality, desire and deception. As the spiritualist movement gained popular support during the mid-19th century, it was common to receive invitations to parties that included “tea and table-tilting.” These small private gatherings often included local mediums who caused furniture to vibrate and move due to what they claimed was a direction communication with spirits and ghosts. It is not surprising that these events happened in the parlor or sitting room of a private home; this room was accustomed to playing an intermediary role, as it traditionally provided a middle-ground between the privacy of the domestic setting and the larger forces of the public world.
Drawing from photographs taken during the later half of the 19th century that attempted to prove the authenticity of these spirit encounters, this installation will recreate the very real desire displayed in these images to communicate with the dead while also employing the artifice and trickery skillful mediums used to ensure this desire was fulfilled. In Tea and Tabletilting, Bouton will create several small vignettes or theatrical sets in which hand-painted wallpaper and faux architectural elements will combine with photographic cutouts of the séance participants. These figures, furniture pieces, and additional props will appear like lifesized paper doll pieces. The spirits summoned into each space will be created with sculptural elements and projected video, and their vivid color and mobility will appear, as a means of meditating on human desire, more life-like than the rest of the sepia-toned scene. Here, the artist plays the role of the original medium by constructing an experience where, (with the help of some simple technological slight-of-hand and trick-of-the-eye) the worlds of the living and the dead seemingly collide.
Support for The Sitting Room is provided by:
Additional support provided by the Independence Foundation, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Philadelphia Cultural Fund, and Members of the PAA.
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